French authorities ordered tourists and others to leave the Mont Saint-Michel abbey and monument in western France on Sunday after a visitor apparently threatened to attack security services. The national gendarme service said the man made the threat on one of the shuttles serving the site, on a peninsula in the English Channel. An official with the gendarme service said the threat was vague, but prompted authorities to order an evacuation. A shuttle service official said large crowds were being evacuated from the tourist attraction or turned away, and a police helicopter is flying overhead, but the atmosphere remained calm. Mont Saint-Michel, which is surrounded by water at high tide, draws more than a million visitors a year to its abbey and other sites, making it France's biggest tourist attraction outside Paris.

Source: CBC News April 22, 2018 10:01 UTC