Thieves loot gold shop during French pension protest

French police were on Tuesday looking for thieves who made off with 25,000 euros in coins and ingots from a gold shop during a protest against pension reforms, a prosecutor said.

President Emmanuel Macron early on Saturday signed into law his deeply unpopular reform raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, further stoking outrage across the country.

As protests erupted in the western city of Rennes later that day, the manager of a gold shop, in the basement at the time, heard noises upstairs, prosecutor Philippe Astruc said.

“As protesters walked by outside, she noticed that three of the shop’s windows were broken,” he said.

As she opened the door to check on the damage, “two individuals rammed their way into the store. The first grabbed gold coins and ingots, while the second held her fast by her forearms,” he added.

They left with an estimated 25,000 euros ($27,000) worth of loot.

More than 1,000 people took part in the protest in Rennes on Saturday, which erupted in skirmishes between protesters and police, AFP reporters there said.

The previous night, after the country’s constitutional court approved the reform after three months of largely peaceful protests against it, several shop fronts were damaged in the city.

Rennes’ Socialist mayor Nathalie Appere told AFP that the town centre had been “pillaged” in the clashes.