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
Man detained after museum standoff in southern France
