PARIS — For a second straight night, mysterious unidentified flying objects were spotted over some of Paris’s most identifiable landmarks, officials said on Wednesday.
Agnès Thibault-Lecuivre, the spokeswoman for the Paris prosecutor, said on Wednesday that drones had been spotted overnight near Les Invalides and Place de la Concorde, but that it was unclear how many drones had been involved and who was behind them. She did not say whether the drone flights had been coordinated.
The police said on Tuesday that they were investigating “overflights by aircraft in a forbidden area” after the first sightings of drones overnight, which circled the Eiffel Tower and the United States Embassy. The drone sightings raised security concerns a month after deadly terrorist attacks in the Paris area. The United States Embassy did not comment on the sightings.
Flying drones over Paris is forbidden unless authorization from the city’s prefect has been obtained. Paris has been on a high security alert after terrorist attacks last month, including the assault on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, that left 20 people dead.
Last year, officials investigated another mysterious wave of drone flights over more than a dozen nuclear plants across France, raising concerns about security around the country’s primary energy sources.
The authorities called those incidents an “organized provocation” aimed at “disrupting the surveillance chain and protection of these sites.”
The drones were described by police officials as small and civilian or commercial, rather than of a military type.
The latest drone sightings in France took place several weeks after a drunken, off-duty employee for a United States government intelligence agency accidentally crashed a commercial drone on the grounds of the White House.
The employee said he had lost control of the drone as he operated it from his apartment, only a few blocks from the White House. He later got in touch with his employer and helped with the investigation into the crash. Though White House officials described the drone as harmless, it raised questions about security for President Obama and his family.
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