Polish police cordon off Warsaw square amid reports of bomb threat

[October 14, 2023]  WARSAW (Reuters) -Police cordoned off Warsaw's Pilsudski Square and the surrounding area of the Polish capital on Saturday, with local media reporting that a man had climbed onto a monument in the square and threatened to blow himself up. 

The incident came a day before Poland holds a high-stakes parliamentary election.

A police officer at the scene told a Reuters reporter: "No entrance, there is a bomb," but a police spokesperson quoted by the state-run PAP news agency did not confirm the reports that the man was threatening to blow himself up.

"At the moment negotiations are going on, on the scene there are negotiators and counter-terrorist officers," the spokesperson told Reuters, urging members of the public to stay away from the area.

He declined further comment on the ongoing incident.

Footage posted on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, showed a man standing on top of the Smolensk monument, which commemorates the victims of a 2010 air disaster that killed 96 people including President Lech Kaczynski and his wife, Maria.

PAP said several hundred officers were involved in an operation around the square. A Reuters video journalist saw armed officers arriving nearby.

A guest at the Sofitel hotel, which faces the square, said they had been told to only leave the building by the back exit.

(Reporting by Thomas Holdstock and Kuba Stezycki, writing by Alan CharlishEditing by Sharon Singleton and Helen Popper)

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