PARIS, March 25-- Declaring a war against "an invisible enemy," President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday announced an army operation "Resilience" to back the fight against the coronavirus pandemic and support the population. "We are at war and faced with the peak of the epidemic which is before us, I decided to launch the operation Resilience," Macron said on the sidelines of a visit to a military field hospital in Mulhouse, eastern France, the worst-hit region. The operation will focus on helping population and supporting public services to cope with the COVID-19 epidemic, in France's mainland and overseas, notably in health, logistics and protection fields, he added. The president announced that a Mistral amphibious helicopter carrier would be immediately sent to the southern Indian Ocean, and a Diksmuide helicopter carrier would be deployed by April in the Antilles-Guyana area to help transport patients. "Our military forces are ready and determined," Macron said "We have only one priority: to beat the virus." "I told you we were in a war, an invisible enemy...When we start a war we engage in it entirely, we mobilize in union," Macron said, in response to those "who would fracture the country." "We must have only one obsession, to be united to fight the virus," he stressed amid mounting critics over the government's laxity to impose nationwide lockdown to curb the virus circulation. Among the new batch of counter-coronavirus measures, the head of state pledged "massive" new investment plan for public hospitals. |