German police had to evacuate a huge crowd in an open-air weekend “Rock am Ring” concert, one of the biggest musical festivals in the country, near the Nurburgring race track on Friday night due to “concrete leads” of a possible terror threat.
The local police said in a statement that due to the threat of a terror danger situation, they told the festival organizers to temporarily stop the concert as a precaution.
Concert-goers were asked to leave the venue and head to nearby camping grounds in a “controlled and orderly fashion.” Authorities and organizers have pegged the number of attendees to be around 80,000. The music fans have traveled to the Nurburgring for the festival.
Local authorities have admitted that the suicide bombing at the Ariana Grande pop concert in Manchester last month influenced the changes in the security planning for the German concert. The security forces have been substantially increased as well to 1,200 police officers scattered in the field.
The authorities said: “We take all tips and suspicious incidents extremely seriously and investigate closely.”
Festival organizers are hoping to resume on Saturday. The events are previously scheduled to run until Sunday.
Concert-goers sang to the song “You’ll Never Walk Alone” as they leave the festival grounds. There are also, however, many attendees who refused to leave the Rock am Ring facilities as they felt they will be safer there than in camping areas.
Source:
no terrorism caused this