French law enforcement arrested two men for parachuting off the Eiffel Tower Thursday, a police source said. Security staff spotted the pair scaling the 330-meter Paris monument before dawn, wearing balaclavas and carrying parachutes. They called police and civil defense to the scene, who tried to make contact with the climbers.
The men signalled they wanted to jump and leapt off the tower around 6 am local time. Police arrested them once they had landed and also detained a third person who had been near the monument but had not taken part in the climb, the source said.
Completed in 1889 for Paris's Universal Exhibition, the Eiffel Tower is owned by the city of Paris. One of the world's most visited monuments, it attracts around seven million people every year, around three quarters of them from abroad, according to its website.