Two suspects have been arrested on suspicion of stealing precious crown jewels from the Louvre Museum in Paris, French media said.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said one of the men was arrested as he was preparing to board a flight at Charles de Gaulle airport.
Items worth 88 million euros (76 million pounds, $102 million) were seized from the world’s most visited museum when four power tool-wielding thieves broke into the building in broad daylight last Sunday.
France’s justice minister admitted security protocols had ‘failed’, giving the country a ‘horrible image’.
The Paris prosecutor’s office said in a statement that the arrests had been made on Saturday evening, without specifying how many people had been detained.
According to police sources, one of the suspects was preparing to travel to Algeria, while the other was scheduled to go to Mali.
Specialist police can interrogate people for up to 96 hours.
Paris prosecutors criticized the ‘premature disclosure’ of information about the case, saying it interfered with the recovery of the jewels and the arrest of the thief.
The thieves reportedly arrived at 09:30 (06:30 GMT), shortly after the museum opened to visitors.
The suspects arrived in a mechanical lift mounted on a vehicle to access the Galerie d’Apollon via a balcony near the Seine River.
Photos from the scene show a ladder leading to a first-floor window.
Two thieves broke in through the window with power tools.
They then threatened security guards, who evacuated the building, and cut the glass of two display cases containing the jewels.
According to French media, preliminary investigations showed that one in three rooms in the raided area of the museum did not have CCTV cameras.
French police said the thieves were inside for four minutes and escaped at 09:38 on two scooters waiting outside.
The museum’s director told French senators this week that the only camera monitoring the exterior walls of the Louvre they broke into was pointed at a first-floor balcony leading to the Apollo Museum.
Laurence des Cars said the surrounding CCTV was also weak and aging, meaning staff did not spot the gang early enough to prevent the theft.
Experts also expressed concern that the gem may have already broken into hundreds of pieces.
Gold and silver can be melted down and jewels can be cut into smaller stones, making it virtually impossible to trace a robbery, Dutch art detective Arthur Brand told the BBC.
Security measures at cultural institutions in France have since been strengthened.
The Louvre transferred some of its most precious jewels to a French bank after the robbery. They will now be stored in the bank’s most secure vault, 26 meters (85 feet) underground on the ground floor of its elegant headquarters in central Paris.
