Eiffel Tower in Paris was evacuated for two hours on Wednesday after an anonymous caller threatened to blow up the great edifice in the heart of the French capital, it has emerged.
Police said after an inspection, nothing suspicious was found and the Eiffel Tower was able to reopen to visitors.
A police source who spoke anonymously to AFP stated that;
A man phoned up, shouted ‘Allah Akbar’ and said he was going to ‘blow up everything’ at the Eiffel Tower.
A security cordon was put around the monument, traffic diverted and the Eiffel Tower evacuated at 12:15 pm (10:15 GMT).
The tower’s operator, Société d’Exploitation de la tour Eiffel (SETE) in a statement said that after a thorough search nothing was found, the tower was able to reopen at 2:15 pm.
The monument had reopened on June 26 after its longest closure since World War II forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Eiffel Tower usually receives about seven million visitors a year, about three-quarters from abroad, although even after reopening numbers are down sharply due to travel restrictions amid the pandemic.
