Thick black smoke billowed above Paris on Monday after an RATP electric bus caught fire in the city centre, a Reuters witness said. The fire started just after 4pm local time at Place Maubert and Saint-Germain Boulevard, close to Notre-Dame cathedral. Police cordoned off the area as fire fighters put out the flames. “Bus fire with heavy smoke in Place Maubert. The emergency services are responding, avoid the area,” French police tweeted. The fire was successfully doused at 4.45pm local time. The cause is yet to be established but there were reports of several loud bangs. It is not yet known if there were any injuries. Whilst the fire itself was quickly tamed, the smoke it generated was seen from miles around. Pictures and footage showed a column of thick black smoke rising over the Seine river, only a couple of hundred metres (yards) away from <a href="https://www.thenationalnews.com/world/europe/notre-dame-cathedral-fire-tributes-pour-in-from-across-the-world-1.849404" target="_blank">Paris's famous Notre-Dame cathedral, the roof of which was destroyed in a massive fire</a> three years ago. Footage posted to Twitter from the @BigBreakingNow handle showed people next to the cathedral react to the fumes, with curiosity rather than panic the prevailing mood. From a more lofty position, @Cicek_Kahraman_ tweeted footage taken from the roof of the Pompidou centre. While closer to the scene, <a href="https://twitter.com/JPFOTOGRAFOSS">@JPFOTOGRAFOSS</a> showed the intensity of the blaze.