Heightened security in European capitals for New Year's celebrations

European capitals tightened security on Friday ahead of New Year's celebrations, putting upconcrete barriers in city centres and boosting police numbers after the Christmas market attack in Berlin that killed 12 people Dec. 19.

In the German capital, police closed the Pariser Platz square in front of the Brandenburg Gate and prepared to deploy 1,700 extra officers, many along a party strip where armoured cars will flank concrete barriers blocking off the area.

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"Every measure is being taken to prevent a possible attack," Berlin police spokesman Thomas Neuendorf told Reuters TV. Some police officers willcarry sub-machine guns, he said, an unusual tactic for German police.

The attack in Berlin Dec. 19, in which a Tunisian man plowed a truck into a Christmas market, has prompted German lawmakers to call for tougher security measures. ISIS later claimed responsibility for the attack.

In Milan, where police shot the man dead a few days after the Berlin attack, security checks were set up around the main square. Trucks were banned from the centres of Rome and Naples. Police and soldiers cradled machine guns outside touristsites, including Rome's Colosseum.

Madrid plans to deploy an extra 1,600 police on the New Year weekend. For the second year running, access to the city's central Puerta del Sol square, where revellers traditionally gather to bring in the New Year, will be restricted to 25,000 people.

In Cologne in western Germany, where hundreds of women were sexually assaulted and robbed outside the central train station on New Year's Eve last year, police have installed new video surveillance cameras to monitor the station square.

The attacks in Cologne, where police said the suspects were mainly of North African and Arab appearance, fuelled criticism of German Chancellor Angela Merkel's decision to accept nearly 900,000 migrants last year. The Berlin attack has intensified that criticism.

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In Frankfurt, home to the European Central Bank and Germany's biggest airport, more than 600 police officers will be on duty New Year's Eve, twice as many as in 2015. In Brussels where suicide bombers killed 16 people and injured more than 150 in March the mayor was reviewing whether to cancel New Year fireworks, but decided this week that they would go ahead.

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In Paris, where ISISgunmen killed 130 people in November 2015, authorities prepared for a high-security weekend, the highlight of which will be the fireworks on the Avenue des Champs Elyse, where some 600,000 people are expected.

Ahead of New Year's Eve, heavily armed soldiers patrolled popular Paris tourist sites such as the Eiffel Tower, the Arc de Triomphe and the Louvre museum. In the Paris metropolitan area, 10,300 police, gendarmes, soldiers, firemen and other personnel will be deployed, police said, fewer than the 11,000 in 2015 just weeks after the Nov. 13 attack at the Bataclan theatre.

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Across France, more than 90,000 police, including 7,000 soldiers,will be on duty for New Year's Eve, authorities said.

Arrests, pocket alarms

On Wednesday, police in southwest France arrested a man suspected of having planned an attack on New Year's Eve. Two other people, one of whom was suspected of having planned an attack on police, were arrested in a separate raid, also in southwest France, near Toulouse, police sources told Reuters.

"We must remain vigilant at all times, and we are asking citizens to also be vigilant," French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux told a news conference in Paris, noting that the threat of a terrorist attack was high.

In Vienna, police handed out more than a thousand pocket alarms to women, eager to avoid a repeat of the sexual assaults at New Year in Cologne in 2015.

"At present, there is no evidence of any specific danger in Austria. However, we are talking about an increased risk situation," Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said. "We are leaving nothing to chance with regard to security."

In Ukraine, police arrested a man on Friday who they suspected of planning a Berlin copycat attack in the city of Odessa.

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