Coin Press - 200 firefighters battle major Paris inferno

A thick black cloud could be seen across the French capital as firefighters battled the blaze that ripped through one of the city's biggest recycling plants.

Around 60 fire trucks and 200 firefighters were at the scene, the fire brigade said, adding that there were no victims.

Flames lit up the night sky and authorities closed part of the main ring road around Paris to allow access to the burning building for fire-fighting vehicles.

"The building is completely gutted and destroyed," Geoffrey Boulard, mayor for the affected 17th arrondissement, told BFM television, but all staff inside had been evacuated.

"Fire fighters arrived very quickly, but the fire happened underground and then spread through the building," Boulard said.Geoffrey Boulard, mayor for the affected 17th arrondissement, told BFM television

The fire at the Syctom recycling plant was right next to Paris's main court complex, whose centrepiece is a glass skyscraper designed by Italian architect Piano and inaugurated in 2018.

The plant, which started operations in 2019, was designed to handle household waste for nearly a million Paris residents, according to city authorities.

"The most important thing tonight is that a disaster on this scale did not have any human damage," the site's president Corentin Duprey told BFM.

Geoffrey Boulard, mayor for the affected 17th arrondissement, told BFM televisionHe said 31 employees were present when the blaze started in a recycling zone in a basement "where there was the most combustible material".

St.Ch.Baker--CPN