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PARIS: Robbers wielding power tools scaled a furniture hoist outside the Louvre to make off with priceless jewelry from the world-renowned museum on Sunday, taking just seven minutes for the brazen, broad-daylight heist, sources and officials said.

The theft — just the latest to have targeted a French institution in recent months — saw the museum, the world’s most visited and filled with treasures including the Mona Lisa, shut its doors for the day to the busy weekend crowds.

AFP saw a police forensics team arrive and go into the museum, while uniformed soldiers with automatic rifles patrolled the Louvre’s famed esplanade, which was cleared of all visitors. Roads around the museum were closed off with police tape.

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez said three of four thieves had used the furniture hoist to steal “priceless” goods from the museum’s “Gallerie d’Apollon” (“Apollo’s Gallery“).

It was not immediately clear what exactly they had stolen from the gilded gallery, which the museum’s website says is home to the French crown jewels.

They include three historical diamonds – the Regent, the Sancy and the Hortensia – as well as an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife Empress Marie-Louise, it said.

The thieves arrived between 9:30 a.m. and 9:40 a.m. (0730 and 0740 GMT) for their robbery, a source following the case said.

A separate police source said the robbers had drawn up on a scooter armed with angle grinders and used the hoist to reach the room they were targeting.

The brazen robbery happened just 800 meters (yards) from Paris police headquarters.

France’s Culture Minister Rachida Dati earlier on Sunday reported a “robbery” at the museum and said “no injuries” had been reported.

The Louvre said on X it was closing its doors for the day “for exceptional reasons.”

But contacted by AFP, it did not wish to immediately provide further comment.

The Paris prosecutor’s office said it had opened an investigation and the value of the loot was still being estimated.

Series of heists

The seat of French kings until Louis XIV abandoned it for Versailles in the late 1600s, the Louvre is regularly listed as the world’s most visited museum.

The exhibition venue welcomed nine million visitors last year.

Louis XIV commissioned the “Gallerie d’Apollon” himself. It later served as a model for the Hall of Mirrors at the Chateau de Versailles.

Several French museum have recently been targeted.

Last month, thieves broke into Paris’s Natural History Museum, making off with gold samples worth €600,000 ($700,000).

They used an angle grinder and a blow torch to steal the native gold, a metal alloy containing gold and silver in their natural unrefined form.

In November last year, four thieves stole snuffboxes and other precious artifacts from another Paris museum in broad daylight, breaking into a display case with axes and baseball bats.

They snuck into the Cognacq-Jay museum wearing gloves, hoods and helmets, striking in full view of other visitors to the museum.

French President Emmanuel Macron in January pledged the Louvre would be “redesigned, restored and enlarged” after its director voiced alarm about dire conditions inside.

He said he hoped that the works could help increase the annual number of visitors to 12 million.

BEIJING: China on Sunday accused the US National Security Agency of carrying out cyberattacks on its national time center following an investigation, saying any damage to related facilities could have disrupted network communications, financial systems and power supply.
The Ministry of State Security alleged in a WeChat post that the US agency had exploited vulnerabilities in the messaging services of a foreign mobile phone brand to steal sensitive information from devices of the National Time Service Center’s staff in 2022. It did not specify the brand.
The US agency also used 42 types of “special cyberattack weapons” to target the center’s multiple internal network systems and attempted to infiltrate a key timing system between 2023 and 2024, it said.
It said it had evidence but did not provide it in the post.
It said the time center is responsible for generating and distributing China’s standard time, in addition to providing timing services to industries such as communications, finance, power, transport and defense. It had provided guidance to the center to eliminate the risks.
“The US is accusing others of what it does itself, repeatedly hyping up claims about Chinese cyber threats,” it said.
Western governments in recent years have alleged hackers linked to the Chinese government have targeted officials, journalists, corporations and others. The ministry’s statement could fuel tensions between Washington and Beijing, on top of trade, technology and Taiwan issues.
The US Embassy did not immediately comment.