Six Individuals Detained After €12M Robbery on Gold Processing Laboratory in the French Republic

A group of six individuals carrying assault rifles and handguns used explosive devices to breach the security of a gold treatment facility located in the city of Lyon, causing light wounds to five employees during what appears to be the latest high-profile daytime heist to affect France.

The bold operation was carried out on Thursday afternoon, with law enforcement authorities rapidly detaining the suspected perpetrators and retrieving the loot assessed at around €12 million (10.5 million pounds), according to officials.

Five employees of the gold refining company sustained minor injuries as a result of the detonation, and three individuals were taken to a medical facility for assessment, the regional prefecture announced. A total of twenty-eight staff were inside the facility when the perpetrators raided.

Those arrested, thought to be career criminals, were detained a brief time later in the adjacent municipality of the town of Vénissieux, authorities revealed.

A woman involved who participated in the raid was taken into custody as well, a police source indicated.

“Six individuals who employed explosive devices in a raid against a gold refining facility in Lyon were arrested at the scene,” the French interior minister announced via X, praising officers for their “decisiveness, speed and control”.

High-caliber firearms, handguns and detonation devices were also confiscated.

The raid happened as authorities on that Thursday detained five further people, featuring a main perpetrator, in connection with the recent audacious Louvre museum robbery.

Many investigative personnel have been searching for four perpetrators who employed a truck featuring an elevating platform and cutting tools to break into an upper-level exhibition space at the museum on the nineteenth of October, making off with jewelry valued at approximately 88 million euros.

In a separate high-profile case, robbers the previous month entered illegally the French capital's Natural History Museum, stealing gold samples worth over $1 million. A 24-year-old Chinese woman was arrested earlier this month in Barcelona, Spain in connection with the break-in, according to legal authorities.

The sequence of heists has raised concerns in France regarding lax security at cultural venues and other facilities holding high-value objects.