Bomb Threat Clears Lourdes

Hoax strikes on Feast of the Assumption

By Jane Yager, Newser Staff

Posted Aug 16, 2010 4:17 AM CDT

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Bomb Threat Clears Lourdes — Pilgrims at the Lourdes shrine, France, during mass, Aug.16, 2010.The Catholic shrine of Lourdes has been re-opened yesterday afternoon after a bomb alert caused French police to evacuate the site. (AP Photo/Bob Edme)

Some 30,000 Catholic pilgrims, many of them disabled or ailing, had to flee the Lourdes pilgrimage site in France yesterday because of a bomb scare on the Feast of the Assumption, one of the site's busiest days of the year. A phone call to police warning that four bombs planted on the site would go off at 3pm turned out to be a hoax, and the pilgrims, who were evacuated around noon, were allowed to return later in the afternoon, BBC reports.
(Read more pilgrimage stories.)