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Dozens of people were treated in hospital for minor injuries overnight after false rumors circulated of a shooting along the main promenade of the French Riviera town Cannes, officials and rescuers said on Tuesday.
The emergency services counted 44 injured at 2 a.m. GMT and those affected were brought to hospital by ambulance and others made their own way there to be treated.
All the injuries were minor and mainly to the lower leg, as holidaymakers and diners ran into one another in a scramble to escape.
Nearly 100 emergency services personnel were deployed to the Croisette promenade to deal with the aftermath of the incident, in the town best known for hosting the Cannes Film Festival.
Amateur videos of the crush were posted online and showed people ducking under dining tables and running in all directions on the seafront promenade, which is famously lined with luxury boutiques.
"There were no gunshots in Cannes," said mayor David Lisnard in a tweet. He said there was instead "collective panic after an individual shouted 'gunshot'."
Lisnard said the panicked reaction "says a lot about the level of tension in our society."
The local authority for the Alpes-Maritime region, which includes Cannes and Nice, tweeted in the early hours that there had been "no shooting nor gunfire. It is a panic. DON'T SPREAD FALSE RUMOURS!"
France has been the target of several terror attacks since 2015, including a man ramming a truck into a crowd in the coastal city of Nice on the 14 July national holiday in 2016, killing 86 people.
Source(s): AFP
