AFP, Paris: A major fire Tuesday ravaged a section of the landmark Paris Ritz hotel, which has been closed for over three years for renovations and had been set to reopen in March, the fire service said.
The fire broke out at around 7:00 am (0600 GMT) on the top floor of the luxury hotel, vividly remembered by many as the place where Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed dined before their fatal car crash in 1997. Firefighters brought the blaze under control several hours later but were battling to extinguish flames in the attic, said fire services spokesman Yvon Bot.
"We are having to go metre by metre from the roof. It is too small to access from the interior," he said. The operation is expected to last several hours. Bot said no one was in the five-star hotel aside from the some 150 construction workers who were evacuated from the site, and there were no casualties but a "large" part of the building was affected.