Franco-Swiss Basel-Mulhouse airport briefly evacuated after bomb alert

Brussels: The Franco-Swiss airport of Basel-Mulhouse was evacuated and closed for a short while on Friday due to a bomb alert, hours before the Olympics opening ceremony in Paris was due to start, airport authorities said.

"For safety reasons, the terminal had to be evacuated," the airport said on its website at the time.

Around midday, the airport said it was reopening and that flight operations would gradually resume.

An air traffic controller at the airport told Reuters it was the seventh alert since last October.

An Air France flight to Paris could not take off due to the bomb alert, an Air France representative told Reuters.

Hours before, vandals targeted France's high-speed TGV train network with a series of coordinated actions that brought major disruption to some of the country's busiest rail lines ahead of the Paris Olympics opening ceremony.