The World : Bandits Get $12.5 Million

Five masked gunmen escaped with $12.5 million after robbing a bank in Saint-Nazaire on the Brittany coast of France, authorities said. The take, from a branch of the Bank of France, exceeds the $11.5 million stolen from the Caisse d’Epargne in Paris in 1980, France’s largest previous bank robbery. Police said the gunmen first broke into a cashier’s apartment above the bank and shot him while he grappled for a gun. The bandits then awakened the bank director in a neighboring apartment and took him hostage. They waited at the bank for arriving employees, getting the keys to the safe from one of them. The cashier was in satisfactory condition at a hospital, and the bank director was released.