Gold stolen as another French museum is targeted by thieves

Historic gold samples with a street value of €600,000 (£520,000) but priceless to scientists and researchers have been stolen from France's national natural history museum, in the country's latest museum robbery.

- Angelique Chrisafis

"This has happened in a critical context for cultural establishments in France, particularly museums," the Paris museum said. “Several public collections have been the victims of robberies in the past months.”

Early on Tuesday, an apparently well-planned criminal operation targeted the geology and mineralogy gallery at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle. Cleaning staff detected the break-in later that day and museum teams saw that four to six pieces of gold were missing.

The thieves are believed to have used an angle grinder and blowtorch to force their way into the riverside museum that sits on the edge of Paris's Jardin des Plantes. It is an unprecedented theft from the high-security museum.