A 24-year-old kitesurfer crashed to his death when wind swept him up and hurled him over a nine-storey building at a seaside resort in France, witnesses said.
'He was overwhelmed by the force of the wind while he was kitesurfing' by a central beach in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, a resort town on France's southwestern Atlantic coast, an official in the rescue services said.
'He crashed into a nine-storey building and then went over it,' the official added.
'Afterwards he was carried even higher and then lost force in the sail and crashed down.'
Kitesurfers harness themselves to a high sail to catch the wind and pull them along at high speed with their feet on a surfboard.
Reports said the weather was wet and windy yesterday afternoon when the accident happened.
Witnesses told AFP that the wind first tossed the man against a three-metre sea wall next to the beach before pulling him higher.
A porter at the Grand Hotel just across the road from the beach said the surfer shot into the air at 'incredible speed', was hurled over the top of a nearby residential building and fell 15 metres to the ground behind it.
'A doctor who was attending a seminar at our hotel was the first on the scene. He thought the young man must have been killed by hitting the sea wall first,' the porter said.
He added that there were marks on the beach indicating the surfer had tried to brake in the sand.
A similar accident struck in April 2009 in nearby Bidart, where a 23-year-old man died from his injuries after being hurled by his kitesurfing sail into a car park.
