Thick black smoke seen rising in central Paris as bus catches fire: Report

Thick black smoke billowed above central Paris on Monday after a bus caught fire on the upmarket Saint-Germain boulevard, a Reuters witness said.

Police cordoned off the area as fire fighters put out the flames in the afternoon.

A picture shot by an eyewitness showed a column of thick black smoke rising over the Seine river, only a couple of hundred metres (yards) away from Paris's famous Notre-Dame cathedral, the roof of which was destroyed in a massive fire around three years ago.