Thieves steal 4 Renoir paintings from French Riviera museum,...

PARIS (AP) — Two thieves sliced through a fence, climbed through a window and stole four valuable Renoir paintings Tuesday from a small museum on the French Riviera, but abandoned two of the artworks as they fled, authorities said. Investigators launched a national search for the perpetrators. The whole operation took less than three minutes and targeted the most valuable works in the Renoir Museum in the town of Cagnes-sur-Mer, the regional prosecutor's office said. The theft conjured up painful memories of the spectacular heist of crown jewels at the Louvre Museum in Paris last year and revived calls for better security and better funding for the many cultural sites large and small that dot France's landscape. Cagnes-sur-Mer Mayor Bryan Masson estimated the value of the combined Renoir works stolen Tuesday at 9 million euros ($10.5 million), but art theft experts warned they will be extremely hard to sell. The Renoir Museum is housed in the last home of painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir, where he lived before his death in 1919. It's the most famous attraction in Cagnes-sur-Mer, situated between Cannes and Nice on the Mediterranean coast. The 'well-equipped' and 'well-informed' thieves entered the Renoir Museum via the garden, Masson told reporters at the scene. They sliced through a fence with an electric knife or saw, entered the museum through the ground floor, and then cut the clips securing the artwork frames, Masson said in remarks carried by local broadcaster Ici Azur. The museum's alarm system went off at 5:48 a.m. local time, and police arrived five minutes later, the mayor said. Their swift arrival 'forced the burglars to flee in haste and helped limit the scale of the theft,' the mayor said in a written statement sent to The Associated Press.