Tiger spotted on the prowl in Paris suburb of Seine-et-Marne
FRENCH authorities say a tiger is on the loose near Disneyland Paris and have urged residents in three towns to stay indoors.
POLICE and firefighters are hunting for a tiger on the loose near Paris after a local resident spotted the animal in a car park and sounded the alert.
Backed up by a helicopter, firefighters armed with tranquillising guns combed the area in the Seine-et-Marne district, less than 10 kilometres from Paris Disneyland.
Authorities ordered residents to stay inside and children were kept at school, as several people came forward saying they had seen the tiger on the prowl.
“We are calling on inhabitants to be careful, not to leave their houses and to stay in their vehicles,” town hall official Cedric Tartaud-Gineste said.
He said that a security perimeter covering an area about the size of four or five football pitches had been set up around a wooded area near the small town of Montevrain, some 40km east of Paris.
EuroDisney, the operator of Disneyland Paris, said it has no tigers in the theme park, so the errant cat could not have come from them. It wasn’t immediately clear if any extra precautions had been taken inside the park.
Disneyland Paris calls itself Europe’s No. 1 tourist destination with 14.9 million visits in 2013.
A woman spotted the animal in a supermarket car park in Montevrain on Thursday morning.
“My wife saw it this morning,” Jean-Baptiste Berdeaux, who manages the Intermarche supermarket, told AFP.
“She didn’t get out of the car and called me to say ‘I think I saw a lynx’,” he said, adding she took a photo of the animal and the couple then alerted nearby police officers.
Authorities said they were hoping to catch the animal alive.
“If it’s possible, we’ll try and put it to sleep. If it becomes dangerous or aggressive, the order will be given to kill it,” police said.
It is as yet unclear where the tiger comes from.
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