Paris, Ufaransa

Paris robbers dig their way into bank and raid safes

Thieves break into almost 200 private safe boxes at the LCL branch in Avenue de l'Opéra

French police are hunting for a group of thieves who dug their way into a bank vault in central Paris and broke into almost 200 private safe boxes.

The robbers, who carried out the raid over a period of eight hours on Saturday night and Sunday morning, bored through the underground wall of a neighbouring cellar to reach the vault of the LCL bank branch on Avenue de l'Opéra .

The thieves overpowered and tied up a security guard who had heard suspicious noises coming from the basement. The guard was not harmed, the police said today .

Authorities at LCL – Le Crédit Lyonnais – said they were not yet able to put a price on the stolen loot.

On their way out of the bank at about 7am, the robbers set fire to the safe room and triggered sprinklers, which left the scene of the crime partially flooded.

Today clients of the bank reacted angrily. Michel Barnich, who said two of his safes are thought to have been opened, criticised the LCL authorities.

"The fact there was no Crédit Lyonnais representative to meet us today is absolutely unbelievable," he told French radio.

French media were quick to compare the robbery to an earlier bank raid that has gone down in gangster history.

In 1976, Albert Spaggiari and a dozen of his men whisked away €24m (£21m) worth of loot from a branch of Société Générale in Nice through a tunnel drilled from the sewers.

After the heist, in which 337 safe boxes were emptied over two days, Spaggiari left a note for the police which read: "Neither weapons, nor violence, nor hatred."

Spaggiari was arrested the following autumn but later escaped. He was never recaptured. He died of cancer in 1989.