French Police Vigilant After Fatal Bombing In Paris

Police patrolled train stations and airports nationwide on Saturday, snarling France’s annual vacation exodus from sweltering cities to the beach and countryside.

Many police who would be leaving on vacation were called back to work after a bomb exploded Tuesday in a central Paris subway station, killing seven people and wounding dozens of others.

On Saturday, hundreds of officers were looking for abandoned luggage at train stations, checking garbage cans for suspicious packages and detaining people for security checks.

“With more than 500,000 people passing through Lyon train station during the four busiest days of the year, we cannot be negligent,” said Jacques Lagoutte, director of the SNCF train system for southeast Paris.

The blast during rush hour Tuesday aboard a subway car in the Saint-Michel train station in the Latin Quarter was the first fatal bombing in Paris in nine years. It came at the height of the tourist season.

Twenty-three people were still hospitalized Saturday, three of them on life-support systems.

Authorities have said the evidence increasingly points to Algerian insurgents.