QUICK TAKES - May 13, 2009

Thieves pried open the emergency door of a small Dutch museum with an iron bar and made off with six 17th and 19th century landscape paintings -- the second major art heist in 10 days in the Netherlands.

The break-in at 3 a.m. Monday set off an alarm that summoned police within minutes but the burglars already had fled, leaving behind two paintings that they dropped in their haste and damaged, Mark de Kok, a spokesman for the city of IJsselstein, said Tuesday.

The paintings included three by Jan van Goyen, a prolific contemporary of Rembrandt who died in 1656.

The theft occurred 10 days after an armed robbery of two paintings by Salvador Dali and Tamara de Lempicka from the Scheringa Museum for Realism in Spanbroek, a small town in northwest Holland.