Two men robbed a Cartier jewellery store in Paris on Tuesday with an AK-47, leading to a police chase and a brief hostage-taking when the assailants sought refuge in a hair salon.

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The unusual drama took place near the French capital's iconic Champs-Élysées on Tuesday evening.

One witness inside the boutique said the two men, who did not seem “professional”, burst in late in the day and forced the three customers inside and about 10 staff to lie down.

They then demanded that the store’s showcases be opened but were interrupted by the sound of police sirens as they gathered jewellery.

The suspects fled, taking the store manager with them. A witness told AFP he saw one of them dressed in a trench coat and a beret, with a towel in one hand and holding the hostage with the other.

“Everyone tried to hide,” said the witness, who had been sitting at the terrace of a nearby restaurant.

The two men dropped their hostage and escaped on a scooter while shooting into the air, but later fell off the vehicle and ran away on foot before entering the hair salon.

Police cordoned off a large area around the hair salon as the stand-off was under way. The salon manager was the only person inside and was taken hostage. Around 100 police officers were mobilised with the support of a helicopter.

“A negotiator was able to quickly get into contact with them,” Paris prosecutor François Molins told reporters.

“They agreed quite quickly to free the hostage safely, and turned themselves in,” he said.

Along with the AK-47, they also had a 9mm pistol. The stolen jewellery was recovered inside the hair salon.

“There was a lot of money and well-chosen jewellery,” the prosecutor said.

A police officer was lightly wounded by a bullet fragment, while one of the suspects was injured in the scooter fall.

The heist and its aftermath, which lasted about two hours, rattled merchants around the site of the jewellery theft, a busy tourist area decked out for the holiday season.

In recent years France has seen several high-profile robberies of luxury jewellery stores.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP, AP)

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