World

Louvre closes after staff walkout over pickpockets

Paris’s Louvre museum closed on Wednesday due to a walkout by some staff over a rise in aggressive pickpockets including children sometimes working in gangs of up to 30, staff and management said, accoridng to AFP.

Disappointed tourists waited in vain in front of the famed museum, home to works of art such as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, which receives some 10 million visitors a year.

But Christelle Guyader of the SUD union said late Wednesday that the museum would reopen the following day, after management agreed to lay out a series of measures aimed at reinforcing police presence around the building.

Staff at the famed museum staged the walkout as they were fed up with dealing with the often-violent thieves, she said.

Staff said the pickpockets were often children from eastern Europe operating in gangs of up to 30.

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