PARIS — More than a dozen armed assailants attacked two vans carrying millions of euros worth of jewels on a French highway Wednesday, police said. Authorities were combing the Burgundy region, southeast of Paris, in an attempt to find the attackers. The incident is the latest in a string of big jewel heists in France in recent years.
No one was injured in the attack on the A6 highway connecting Paris and Lyon, and the drivers of the two vans were left at the scene unharmed, a police official said. The perpetrators escaped in four cars and the two vans, which police found burned and abandoned in a forest near the site of the attack, the official said. The jewels remain missing. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn't authorized to be publicly named.
No possible suspects were immediately named in Wednesday's theft, although the case was reminiscent of heists by the Pink Panther gang of jewel thieves. The Pink Panther network has been credited with a series of thefts that Interpol says have netted more than 330 million euros since 1999.
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