Metropolitan Police spokeswoman Superintendent Jo Edwards said: “Around 3,000 officers will be on duty as part of our policing operation for the central London fireworks display, to play our part in ensuring that people see in 2016 safely”.
Advertisement
Seven weeks after the latest attacks and a week before the first anniversary of the gunning-down of cartoonists and staff at satirical paper Charlie Hebdo, Paris is greeting the New Year in what Mayor Anne Hidalgo called “an atmosphere of sobriety and togetherness”.
The celebration comes in the wake of the recent terror attacks across the city which claimed the lives of 130 people.
In Belgium’s capital, authorities anxious after thwarting what they say was a holiday terror plot cancelled festivities altogether. “We have no threats we’re aware of directed against this event tonight, but nevertheless we still plan for the worst and then expect the best”.
Other cities around the world have already celebrated 2016 in the past few hours, despite the heightened terror threat.
In his New Year address, President Francois Hollande said France “has not finished with terrorism yet” and that the threat of another attack “remains at its highest level”.
The celebrations and fireworks in other cities were praiseworthy too.
Security was beefed up in Malaysia’s biggest city, Kuala Lumpur, where fireworks greeted 2016 at a historic square and at the Petronas Twin Towers, one of the world’s tallest buildings.
Despite safety concerns, more than 1 million are expected to gather along the famed harbor to watch a glittery display featuring a multicolored firework “waterfall” cascading off the Harbour Bridge and pyrotechnic effects in the shapes of butterflies, octopuses and flowers, before the chimes of midnight move across Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Europe and finally the Americas.
Fireworks explode in Marina Bay against the skyline of Singapore during New Year’s Day celebrations January 1, 2016.
Despite the dramatic scenes from the inferno, which injured sixteen individuals, the festivities went forward as deliberate and crowds cheering the bursts of sunshine and color from an enormous fireworks present at close by Burj Khalifa skyscraper, whilst smoke billowed from the close by lodge.
Police there are warning residents to avoid crowds and train stations amid fears of a New Year’s Eve terror attack in the German city.
“This New Year’s Eve I am going to bop and party till the cock crows”, stated 35-yr-previous Franklyn Smith.
At the heart of Europe, annual festivities and fireworks in Brussels were cancelled as the Belgian capital – home to North Atlantic Treaty Organisation and the European Union – remained on high alert. Some 150 additional police officers will be deployed to secure the event, a police spokesman said, and no one will be allowed to bring in bags and backpacks.
But authorities agreed France’s biggest public gathering since the attacks can go ahead on the Champs Elysees avenue, with bolstered security.
“After what our city has lived through, we have to send a signal to the world”, she told the weekly Journal du Dimanche.
Turkish police have detained two Islamic State suspects allegedly planning to stage attacks in the centre of the capital Ankara which is expected to be packed on New Year’s Eve.
In Moscow, police for the first time closed off Red Square, where tens of thousands of revellers traditionally gather.
“It’s no secret that Moscow is one of the choice targets for terrorists”, Moscow mayor Sergei Sobyanin said recently.
Advertisement
The mayor’s fireworks display was ticketed for the second year and was sold out.
