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The thieves snatched three porcelain works worth millions of euros and were classified as national treasures in a robbery in a French collection in the small hours of Thursday, the museum said.

The thieves caused the alarm around 3:15 am in the National Museum Adrien Duboucouco in the central city of Limoges, where they broke a window to enter, a source close to the case, which asked not to be named, told News.

The suspects entered the historical gallery where they detached with “two particularly important dishes of Chinese porcelain … dating from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries” and a Chinese vase of the 18th century, all designated as “national treasures,” said the museum.

The museum valued the tour at approximately 9.5 million euros ($ 11 million) in an initial estimate for the police.

Prosecutors have opened an investigation into “aggravated robbery of cultural property exhibited in a French museum, committed in a group and property damage.”

The security guards rang the alarm with the police that quickly arrived at the scene, but the suspects had already fled, said the prosecutor of the Limoges public, Emilie Abrantes.

“The security system worked, but it is possible to be reviewed,” the city mayor Emile Roger Lombertie told journalists.

“All the main museums in the world have had stolen articles at one time or another,” Lombertie added before floating a theory behind theft.

“It is likely that collectors are giving orders to steal these articles and resorting to high level criminals,” he said.

The museum has about 18,000 works, including the largest publicly limogen porcelain collection in the world, according to its website.

There were two main thefts in the French museums in November 2024, one in the Cognacq-Jay Museum in Paris, when four people broke an exhibition with axes and bats in broad daylight while visitors looked before escaping with snuffroxes and other precious artifacts. That robbery resulted in an insurance payment of more than $ 4 million to Royal Collection Trust, BBC News reported.

The next day, jewels were taken worth several million euros in an armed robbery in the Hieron Museum in East France.

In May 2024, Armed thieves reached a jewelry In one of the most elegant streets in Paris, and the media reports said that the goal was the exclusive Boutique of Harry Winston, self -dominated “Jeweler to the Stars.”

• Museums
• France
• Heist