Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on Sunday 31st December, 2017 on the Champs-Elysees in Paris to celebrate the transition to the 2018 New Year
“3, 2, 1 … 2018! “Several hundred thousand people gathered Sunday on the Champs Elysees in Paris , braving wind gusts to” bury 2017 “and celebrate the new year, under heavy police security.
After the countdown, the Arc de Triomphe is kindled the traditional fireworks in winds inherited from Carmen storm also swept into the night the West.
Tens of thousands of spectators, including tourists from around the world, had previously attended amazed a light show projected on the famous Arch.
For some, it was a visit long planned. “A must! “Smiles Joan Garner, American tourist, 45, who had planned” specifically for that date “a Paris stopover in the middle of a trip through Europe with her husband.
Before you pick up the show with their phones, onlookers and tourists had begun to invade 7:00 p.m. from the 1910 meters of the “most beautiful avenue in the world,” offered to pedestrians at night.
Family smiles, kissing couple, selfies … They crowded to capture the moment in sparkling illuminations perspective.
Last year, 300,000 people gathered to celebrate the passage to 2017.
Avenue des Champs Élysées 31 décembre Paris pic.twitter.com/vDZzOyjvoP
— Paris (@ParisAMDParis) 31 December 2017
Ils protègent la plus belle avenue du monde : point sur le dispositif de sécurisation des #ChampsElysées avec le @prefpolice. #Réveillon2018 pic.twitter.com/oiMYslg1ZG
— Gérard Collomb (@gerardcollomb) 31 December 2017
The Champs Elysees theater of terrorist attacks
More than two years after the start of the bloody wave of attacks jihadists who made 241 dead, the Champs-Elysees was the scene of two deadly attacks claimed by the organisation Islamic State (EI) committed in 2017 on french soil.
On the 20th April, three days before the first round of presidential elections, a French 39-year long history in court had killed a policeman and wounded two Kalashnikov before being shot.
Two months later, on 19 June, a French 31 year old stuck S (state security) to its membership of the “radical Islamist” and having allegiance to the IE, had hit a moving police van with a car containing two bottles of gas, weapons and thousands of ammunition, causing no casualties, however.
The deployment of security forces has awakened a sense of fear in some. ” Something is happening ? “Asked a Japanese, a hint of fear in her voice, seeing little before 19h a line of police cars up the avenue, with sirens and flashing lights to take his position.
Like many others, Stéphane, thirty in the Paris suburbs, said coming “without fear.” The attacks, “it is far,” he says, “Life ahead. And they (the jihadists), they recoil. “
