A plot by Islamic terrorists to blow up the Eiffel Tower has been uncovered.

 

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

 

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

 

A successful strike on the 7,500 ton iron tower, which was looked down on Paris since 1889, would be a French 9/11 and could cost thousands of lives.

 

The threat was uncovered in a "vague and muffled" radio conversation picked up by air traffic controllers in Lisbon on Thursday.

 

 

It comes after a spate of other threats made in recent days on the websites linked to Osama bin Laden's Al Qaeda terror network, calling for the "brothers of Islam to strike Paris".

 

A police source close to France's DST intelligance agency said last night: "It was a muffled conversation in Arabic that was passed on to us as a matter of course, but 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. We've been at our red security alert for several months."

 

The source added: "Security at the tower was already tight, but is now being stepped up."

 

Paris's socialist mayor, Bertrand Delanoe, has been given extra security protection after an Islamist website used by Al Qaeda members listed him as a target.

 

Mr Delanoe - one of France's few openly gay politicians - was stabbed in an anti-gay attack in 2002.

 

In January 2005, French intelligence officers arrested three French-born Algerians suspected of plotting to blow up the Eiffel Tower.

 

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=507760&in_page_id=1811

I don't believe them, I think the french security are making the plot up, to cause a state of panic and unrest.

 

*gets ready to get attacked for my beliefs*

I did consider that fact that the Daily Mail might be getting over-excited, simply because no other sites had any mention

Did you ever hear about the guy who sold the Eiffel tower for scrap metal... twice?

Yep

 

And did you hear about the guy who sold London Bridge to some American who thought it was going to be Tower Bridge :lol:

^lol, yup.

 

IT's hard to say if this was concocted or not, but I'm guessing it was since there's been no press about it here either. It's unfortunate because the more publicity we give the terrorists, the more it spurs them on to commit real acts of terror. Our morbid fascination with 9/11-type events could end up being a self-fulfilling prophecy.