Briefs | France – Paris police: 18 freed, gunmen at large after store robbery

A group of gunmen broke into a discount clothing store near Paris yesterday, trapping 18 people inside for hours before fleeing and prompting a manhunt throughout the area, police said. All 18 people were safely evacuated from the Primark store in a shopping center in the town of Villeneuve-la-Garenne, according to a regional police official. She said police are now pursuing the assailants. Police surrounded the sprawling shopping center and cordoned off the neighborhood, adjacent to the Seine River about 10 kilometers north of central Paris. The assailants entered the store around 6:30 a.m. yesterday in what police believe was an attempted robbery, another police official said. Several people were already inside, primarily employees. The officials weren’t authorized to be publicly named. Officers from a special police unit entered the store, and a few officers emerged later accompanying women reported to be store employees, according to images broadcast on BFM television. There was no immediate sign of a political or other motive for the robbery.

Russia – 23 dead, 19 injured in military barracks collapse

The ceiling of a Russian military barracks collapsed in Siberia yesterday, causing four stories to crumble and killing 23 young men trapped inside. Rescuers searched for hours for victims trapped under the debris of an airborne troops training center in Omsk following the collapse that occurred in the early hours of the morning. Nineteen people were injured. Authorities sent 10 seriously injured victims to Moscow for treatment while the Kremlin offered condolences to the families of the deceased. The defense ministry wouldn’t speculate on the cause of the accident but the footage and video from the scene showed an entire section of the building lying in ruins. Ministry spokesman Gen.-Maj. Igor Konashenkov said the building was renovated in 2013 but he insisted that could not have caused the collapse.