Eiffel Tower briefly evacuated after telephone threat

(AFP) - The Eiffel Tower, France's top tourist draw, was briefly evacuated on Sunday and the area ringed by security forces.

Police said the action followed a threat delivered by telephone but did not elaborate.

The famous monument was evacuated shortly before 4:00 pm (1800 GMT) and reopened about an hour and a half later.

Evacuations have been staged regularly at the Paris landmark, usually after bomb threats. There have been two such incidents this year, on March 30 and August 9.

On June 18 the monument was closed for two hours after a man threatened to commit suicide.

The Eiffel Tower is the world's most visited monument, attracting up to 32,000 tourists daily.

India temple stampede death toll rises to 109

The death toll from a stampede on a bridge in India rose to 109 Monday after the bodies of more Hindu pilgrims were recovered from the river below, police said.

"The latest information we have from the ground is that 109 people killed and 133 were injured," Anand Mishra, an officer in the local police control room, told AFP in an updated bulletin on Sunday's tragedy.

While scores of victims were crushed to death on the bridge in the town of Ratangarh, others died as the leapt into the river Sindh below in a bid to escape the chaos.

"We recovered the bodies from the river and from where they were crushed to the death," said Mishra, speaking by phone from the nearby city of Datia in the state of Madhya Pradesh.

The tragedy occurred at the same site of another stampede in 2006 in which more than 50 pilgrims were also killed.

- AFP