A great noise was caused by a sonic boom like a military plane.
Paris:
A thunderous noise that terrorized Parisians on Wednesday was caused by the sonic boom of a fighter plane that broke the sound barrier, police in the French capital said.
The army said the plane had been scrambled to aid another plane that had lost radio contact and was authorized to travel at supersonic speed.
“A very loud noise was heard in Paris and in the Paris region. It was not an explosion, it was a fighter plane that crossed the sound barrier,” Paris police said on Twitter, urging people to stop calling. to emergency phone lines.
The noise, which was heard throughout the city and neighboring suburbs and rattled windows, shook Parisians who were already nervous after a knife attack in front of the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo last week that the government has qualified as an act of terror.
“A Rafale, which was carrying out an intervention to help an aircraft that had lost contact, was authorized to break the sound barrier to reach the aircraft in difficulty,” a French air force spokesman told AFP.
No details were given on the type of aircraft or the nature of its difficulty. The spokesman said the fighter emitted its sonic boom over eastern Paris.
Wednesday’s incident generated confusion, with people taking to social media to ask about the noise that many noted came without smoke or other traces of damage.
It was clearly heard during the French Open tennis tournament at Roland Garros, where star player Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland and his German opponent Dominik Koepfer stopped in awe and apparent concern as noise echoed throughout the stadium.
Last Friday, two people were injured in an attack by a man wielding a butcher knife in front of the former Charlie Hebdo offices in central Paris.
The assault came three weeks after the trial of the alleged accomplices in the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket.
Seventeen people were killed in the three-day wave of violence in 2015, including Charlie Hebdo staff and a female police officer.
The bloodshed heralded a wave of Islamist violence in France that left 258 dead. The nation remains on high terrorism alert.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
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