More than 200 firefighters were battling an unprecedented blaze at a recycling centre that sent a pall of smoke above Paris, reports The Times.
The incident at the Syctom site in the west of the French capital, which began when newspapers and magazines caught fire, forced officials to close the Paris ring road while issuing advice to residents to stay inside and shut their windows.
According to French media reports, there were fears that toxic fumes could reach residential areas.
Geoffroy Boulard, the district mayor, said officers were striving to prevent the fire from spreading to other buildings and notably to the nearby Paris courthouse, where Nicolas Sarkozy, the former president, has been on trial for allegedly accepting six million euros in campaign donations from Muammar Gaddafi, the late Libyan dictator.
The plant, inaugurated in 2019, recycles the waste of about 900,000 people in the Paris region and has 80 employees.
Read more of this report from The Times.