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Thieves steal precious metals from Swiss watchmaker

Precious metals stolen from watch supplier in Le Locle
Precious metals were stolen from Werthanor, a watch supplier in Le Locle, canton Neuchâtel. Keystone-SDA

Thieves raided the factory of the Swiss watch supplier Werthanor in Le Locle in northeastern Switzerland on Thursday morning. They fled across the border to France with precious metals of an unknown value, local police reported.

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Werthanor, which has around 230 employees, manufactures watch cases, bracelets and clasps.

According to the police, the perpetrators forced the employees to hand over goods. “One employee was beaten and injured,” Georges-André Lozouet, spokesperson for the Neuchâtel cantonal police, told the Keystone-SDA news agency, confirming an earlier report by the Arcinfo.ch news site.

Numerous police officers took part in a search for the perpetrators, alongside French forces. A vehicle registered in France was tracked between Morteau and Pontarlier in France, according to the report.

“The value of the stolen loot is currently unknown,” the police spokesperson added.

In view of the ongoing operation, the police have not given any details on how many people were involved in the robbery.

Adapted from German by DeepL/sb

This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.

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