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PARIS (Reuters) - Several baboons escaped from their enclosure at a zoo in Paris on Friday, prompting evacuation of the premises while police hunted for the missing monkeys.

The alarm was raised when an employee bumped into one of the baboons in a corridor, the zoo said in a statement.

Zookeepers backed up by police went hunting for four baboons on the run in a zone near their enclosure but none of the monkeys had roamed into public areas, which were in any case evacuated, the statement said.

“A recapture procedure was immediately launched,” it said.

Paris last experienced an animal-on-the-loose alert when a tiger briefly roamed the city after escaping from a circus cage last November. The animal was shot dead.