NICE, France: French police have taken into custody a man who broke into a museum in southern France overnight and threatened to turn it into “hell,” provoking a four-hour standoff, authorities said Wednesday.
Police and a bomb disposal squad surrounded the archeology museum in the Mediterranean town of Saint-Raphael and police were searching the site in case he had an accomplice, the top regional official said.
One of the messages reads “the museum is going to become a hell,” the source said, without specifying if the man was armed or if other people were in the building.
Earlier, in a Twitter message police warned people to avoid the area in the historic center of the resort town tucked between Cannes and Saint-Tropez.
“The entire neighborhood is locked down... We’ve been ordered to stay in the restaurant,” Sebastian, an employee at the Duplex restaurant opposite the museum, told the local Nice-Matin newspaper.
The museum, a historic monument, includes a medieval stone church and a vast collection of amphoras and other items from the region’s Roman history.
Man detained after museum standoff in southern France
Updated 23 October 2019
Man detained after museum standoff in southern France
