Police in France are hunting a group of “battle-hardened” armed thieves who attacked two secure vans carrying jewels at a motorway toll in the dead of night and made off with a haul worth €9m (£6.3m).

Gendarmes and other authorities are combing the Burgundy region south-east of Paris for the gang, after the latest in a string of big jewel heists in France in recent years.

A police source, who wished to remain anonymous, said there were about 15 robbers, all “heavily armed and battle-hardened”.

No one was injured in the attack on the A6 highway connecting Paris and Lyon. The drivers of the two vans were forced out of the vehicles by the attackers, who made off with the jewels, according to sources close to the investigation.

“They are probably men who stem from organised crime and who are well informed. There were no shots fired and everything happened at lightning speed,” a police source said.

The large vans, which were transporting jewels for a planned sale in the eastern city of Besançon, were found burnt and abandoned not far from the toll station. One of them was completely ripped apart. The jewels remain missing.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorised to be publicly named.

Attacks on special vehicles carrying jewels or cash often require equipment such as explosives or assault rifles, and while they occurred regularly at the beginning of the 2000s in France, they have dwindled in recent years.



The last major heist was in 2009 when armoured van driver Toni Musulin escaped with his vehicle after two of his colleagues stepped away, making off with at least €11.5m in cash collected from a Bank of France building.

Musulin became an overnight internet sensation at a time when the super-rich were resented during the financial crisis.

Investigators soon found packets of cash totalling €9.11m in a lockup garage in the south-eastern city of Lyon near where the abandoned van was found, and after 10 days on the run Musulin gave himself in.

The rest of the cash was never found.

When it comes to jewellery, the country’s most spectacular heist was a double robbery at a Harry Winston shop in an upmarket part of Paris in 2007 and 2008.

In the first holdup in October 2007, four masked gunmen wearing decorators’ overalls robbed the store.

The thieves had spent the night in the jewellery shop with the help of a security guard at the store, who let them in the previous evening.

The robbers made off with 120 watches and 360 pieces of jewellery worth more than €32m.

Then just over a year later, in December 2008, four men – including three wearing women’s clothes and wigs – entered the same store, again with the help of the guard.

In less than 20 minutes, they took 104 watches and 297 pieces of jewellery worth €71m and fled in a car.

Last month eight men were sentenced to up to 15 years in jail for their role in the double heist.