Six Individuals Detained Following €12 Million Armed Raid on Precious Metals Facility in the French Republic

Six armed perpetrators carrying assault rifles and handguns employed explosives to force entry into a gold treatment facility located in the city of Lyon, causing light wounds to five employees during described as the newest significant daytime heist to affect the country.

The bold operation took place on the afternoon of Thursday, with officers rapidly detaining the suspected perpetrators and retrieving the loot estimated to be worth €12 million (10.5 million pounds), according to officials.

Five workers of the precious metals facility received light wounds from the blast, and three of them required hospital checks for evaluation, officials confirmed. Twenty-eight employees were inside the facility when the perpetrators raided.

The suspects, considered seasoned offenders, were arrested soon afterwards in the neighboring community of Vénissieux, a source close to the investigation stated.

A female participant who participated in the heist was also apprehended, a police source indicated.

“Six individuals who used detonations in an attack on a metals processing plant in the Lyon area were apprehended red-handed,” the French interior minister stated online, praising officers for their “quick action, authority and management”.

High-caliber firearms, handguns and detonation devices were recovered as well.

The raid happened as law enforcement in France on that Thursday detained five further people, featuring a main perpetrator, in regarding this month's brazen raid on the Louvre museum.

Dozens of investigators have been pursuing four robbers who employed a truck equipped with a moving lift and cutting tools to breach a first-floor gallery at the museum on the nineteenth of October, making off with jewelry valued at approximately 88 million euros.

In a separate high-profile case, burglars recently entered illegally the French capital's Natural History Museum, stealing gold samples estimated at exceeding $1M. A 24-year-old Chinese woman was taken into custody recently in Barcelona, Spain in connection with the break-in, officials confirmed.

The sequence of heists has generated apprehension in France regarding insufficient protection at cultural venues and other facilities housing valuable items.