Muslims Plot To Blow Up Eiffel Tower

From the Daily Mail (thanks to Michael Travis):


Spy chiefs have uncovered a plot by Islamic terrorists to blow up the Eiffel Tower.

A scrambled short-wave radio conversation exposing the planned attack on the world's most visited monument was picked up by Portuguese air traffic controller and passed on to French intelligence services.

The 1,060ft high tower, built in 1889, has more than six million visitors a year - an average of more than 16,000 people a day.

A French police source close to France's DST intelligance agency said last night: "The conversation was picked up on Thursday this week in Portugal and French authorities were immediately alerted.

"It was a muffled conversation in Arabic that was passed on to us as a matter of course, by our analysts clearly identified the threat.

"The sheer number of visitors going up the tower every day means a bomb blowing up there could cause the most massive loss of life.

"Security at the tower is already tight, but is now being stepped up."

The threat to the tower comes after other threats on Islamic websites hinting at attacks on busy Paris shopping streets and banks.

Paris mayor Bertrand Delanoe has also been given extra security protection after an Islamist website used by Al-Qaeda members listed him as a target, French police said last Wednesday.

In January 2005, French intelligence officers arrested three French-born Algerian terror suspects suspected of plotting to bring down the Eiffel Tower.

Khaled Ouazane, 38, his brother Maamar Ouazane, 22, and Hassen Habbar, 35, had begun smuggling bomb-making equipment into France over three years with the intention of amassing enough explosives to collapse the landmark.

A police source said at the time: "Their main target was the Eiffel Tower, which it appears they intended to completely flatten.

"They had intended for the attack to be on a scale comparable with those in New York.

"They had been smuggling explosives to Lyon within the intention of bringing them to Paris for a prolonged bombing campaign."