A hapless thief drilled his way into a French bank at the weekend, but missed the safe and instead found himself in a lavatory where he was promptly arrested, a French newspaper reported on Sunday.

The 21-year-old broke into a building adjoining a branch of Banque Populaire in the Mediterranean port city of Marseille in the early hours of Saturday morning, La Provence newspaper said.

The paper said the man, who came from Belgium and was not named, thought that he was going to end up in a room housing safe deposit boxes but instead drilled into the lavatories.

Alarms were triggered when he broke through the wall and police caught the man when they arrived on the scene.