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MADRID: Thieves on Thursday raided the Treasure of Villena — one of the greatest Bronze Age gold collections — in the latest high-profile heist on a European museum, officials said.
The raid on the 50-plus mainly gold objects in the Spanish town of Villena lasted just minutes. “The alarm at the Villena Museum went off around 5:20am (0320 GMT),” said a spokesman for the town council, adding that by 5:24am the thieves had already left the building.
The operation was “super-fast and super-professional”, the spokesman said. “They’ve taken most of the treasure,” the mayor of Villena, Fulgencio Cerdan, told journalists, his voice breaking.
“We are absolutely devastated, I’m even trembling. The truth is that for those of us from Villena, this destroys us. It’s part of our heritage, of our wealth,” Cerdan said.
