PARIS // Around fifteen “battle-hardened” armed thieves attacked two heavily guarded vans carrying jewels at a French motorway toll station in the dead of night, making off with a haul worth around nine million euros (Dh35.1m), police said on Wednesday.
French police and other authorities were combing the Burgundy region south-east of Paris for the attackers, after what was the latest in a string of big jewel heists in France in recent years.
No one was injured in the midnight attack on the A6 motorway connecting Paris and Lyon, and the drivers of the two vans were left at the scene unharmed after being forced out of their vehicles. The toll booth itself was also not damaged, suggesting the work of professionals.
The perpetrators escaped in four cars and the two vans, which police found burnt and abandoned in a forest near the site of the heist. The jewels remain missing.
Attacks on armoured vehicles carrying jewels or cash often require special equipment such as explosives or assault rifles, and while they occurred regularly at the beginning of the 2000s in France, they have dwindled in recent years.
The last major such heist was in 2009 when armoured van driver Toni Musulin escaped with his vehicle after two of his colleagues stepped away, making off with at least 11.5 million euros in cash collected from a Bank of France building.
Musulin became an overnight internet sensation at a time when the super-rich were being blamed for the financial crisis.
Investigators soon found packets of cash totalling 9.11 million euros in a lock-up garage in the southeastern city of Lyon near where the abandoned van was found, and after some 10 days on the run, Musulin gave himself in.
The rest of the cash was never found.
Although attacks on armoured vehicles have dwindled in recent years however, big jewel heists have occurred in other scenarios.
In November, two gunmen robbed a Cartier jewellery boutique in a tourist-filled Paris neighbourhood, before fleeing police in a chase across the Seine River, taking a hostage, and then surrendering.
In 2013, the Cannes Film Festival was hit by two high-profile thefts. In the first, a gunman walked into a jewel show at the Carlton International Hotel, stole US$136 million (Dh499.5m) in loot, and then disappeared down a side street. In the second, two armed men made off with a haul of luxury watches on the same promenade.
Last month, eight people were convicted in connection with one of the most spectacular jewel thefts in recent French history at a Harry Winston boutique in Paris. In the 2008 hold-up, three cross-dressing gunmen stole about $92 million in goods.
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
