Sonic boom heard in Paris and suburbs caused by fighter jet breaking sound barrier

A major blast has been heard across Paris and its suburbs - LUDOVIC MARIN /AFP
A major blast has been heard across Paris and its suburbs - LUDOVIC MARIN /AFP

A loud blast heard throughout Paris on Wednesday briefly caused panic as edgy residents feared a bombing five days after a terrorist attack outside the former offices of the satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo.

The noise was caused by a sonic boom as a military jet broke the speed of sound, police said.

Pierre Duclos, who was in a café around the corner from the site of the attack on Friday when the explosion-like noise was heard, said: “Everyone looked at each other and a few people got up and went outside. For a while, we thought another terrorist attack was coming and we were all shocked. Some people asked the café owner to close and lock the door. I was here on Friday and frankly I was really worried again today.

On social media, people asked what had caused the noise as it became clear that there were no reports of damage.

The mood calmed after Paris police tweeted that it was a jet breaking the sound barrier.

"A very loud noise was heard in Paris and in the Paris region. It was not an explosion, it was a fighter jet crossing the sound barrier," Paris police said on their Twitter account, urging people to stop calling emergency phone lines.

The blast echoed around the Roland Garros stadium during the French Open tennis tournament and players Stan Wawrinka of Switzerland and his German opponent Dominik Koepfer paused their match in astonishment and worry.

A defence ministry spokesman confirmed it was a sonic boom. The Ministry said the pilot had received permission to break the sound barrier as it had been despatched to assist a commercial plane that had lost contact.

General Jean-Patrick Gaviard, a former air chief, said: “When an airliner loses contact you have to catch up with it, intercept and assist it as soon as possible.”

On Friday, a Pakistani man injured two journalists working for a TV production company with offices in the same building in Paris’s 11th arrondissement where Charlie Hebdo was based until Islamist extremists shot dead 12 people there in 2015.

Zaher Hassan Mahmood, 25, told prosecutors he had wanted to avenge the satirical weekly’s recent republication of cartoons mocking the Prophet Muhammad. They appeared at the start of an ongoing trial of alleged accomplices in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo massacre by brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, who were shot dead by police. Al Qaeda claimed the 2015 attack in revenge for the newspaper’s initial publication of the cartoons, which it said blasphemed Islam.

Mahmood said he had not realised that Charlie Hebdo had moved premises.

His attack came as a grim reminder that the terror threat remains high in France, especially during the trial.