The Eiffel Tower has been evacuated after a threat tonight, several international news sources are reporting.
The Eiffel Tower was evacuated completely at around 7 PM local time, and police were warned of a possible 9:30 PM attack tonight.
According to local press, the Eiffel Tower threat was called in from a Paris phone booth. Most updates are being reported by France’s Le Parisien , but the time of the threatened attack has come and gone and no incidents have been reported at the monument thus far.
The paper says that police have since cleared the Eiffel Tower after the evacuation and allowed tourists, employees and others to resume their business near the landmark, reporting:
” … dog teams have invested the famous monument looking for possible explosives after establishing a security cordon around the site. After about two hours of exploration, around 22 pm, police lifted the measures that have been allowed again and the public access to the Eiffel Tower … any alert is ‘treated seriously,’ say the security services.”
The Atlantic notes that such threats are not uncommon, and it is not yet public knowledge why police in France were so moved by this particular instance, enough to undertake the large task of evacuating and securing the structure.
News of the Eiffel Tower’s evacuation spread quickly on Twitter, with photos of the structure swarmed by police heavily retweeted:
PHOTO: Eiffel Tower evacuated after caller warned of a bomb threat at 9:30 PM (local time) twitter.com/stacos/status/… – @ stefandevries
— NewsBreaker (@NewsBreaker) March 30, 2013
UPDATE: Announced time for Eiffel Tower explosion has passed on.rt.com/7zzvn2
— RT (@RT_com) March 30, 2013
French law enforcement have not yet elaborated on the call made before the Eiffel Tower was evacuated.
