Teens rescued after three days in catacombs

Two teenagers have been treated in hospital for hypothermia after spending three days lost in the network of catacombs under Paris.

The boys, aged 16 and 17, were located near Avenue de la Porte de Montrouge by search crews with sniffer dogs, AFP reports.

A 2km section of the network of about 250km of underground tunnels beneath Paris is open to the public at an official visitors’ site near the Denfert-Rochereau station in the south of the capital.

It is a popular tourist attraction, with visitors often queuing for hours to enter the small section of the tunnels that are open to the public.

The catacombs house the bones of some six million Parisians, who were transferred between the end of the 18th century and the middle of the 19th century as certain cemeteries closed.

Entering other areas of the maze of tunnels has been against the law since 1955, but schoolchildren and partygoers have been known to enter them through a series of access points.