Paris:Smart robbers make away with €10million of jewels from Kim Kardashian West’s exclusive hotel room

French police have launched a major manhunt after masked robbers put a gun to the head of the American reality television star Kim Kardashian West and stole an estimated €10m (£8.7m) worth of jewels from her luxury apartment.

Five men disguised as police officers forced their way into the discreet Hôtel de Pourtalès in Paris’s upmarket 8th arrondissement, where the star was staying, in the early hours of Monday. Two of the robbers, who were wearing police-branded armbands, reportedly tied up Kardashian West, who was in the French capital for Paris fashion week, and locked her in the bathroom while they ransacked the flat.

The star’s publicist said although Kardashian West was not beaten, the men had held a gun to her head leaving her “badly shaken but physically unharmed”.

After giving a statement to police about her ordeal, Kardashian West, 35, was immediately taken to a waiting private jet at the small Le Bourget airport on the outskirts of Paris to be flown back to the US.

Kardashian West, who is married to the American rapper Kanye West, with whom she has two children, was attacked just before 3am, shortly after she had returned from dinner. Earlier on Sunday she had been photographed at the Balenciaga and Givenchy fashion shows.
Before entering Kardashian West’s apartment, the robbers had tied up the night porter at the Hôtel de Pourtalès, which has nine opulent apartments. Among the jewels stolen was a €4m 15-carat diamond ring given to Kardashian West by her husband, and two smartphones. The robbers were reported to have escaped on bicycles.

West was performing at the Meadow Music and Art festival in New York when he was told of the attack on his wife. He immediately cancelled the set citing a “family emergency” to disappointed fans. The couple’s two children, North, three, and Saint, nine months, were reportedly not in the room at the time of the attack.

The 19th-century Hôtel de Pourtalès on rue Tronchet, in Paris’s chic Madeleine district, is so discreet it is known as No Address, France. Behind the burgundy oak and wrought-iron doors of the neo-Renaissance mansion, constructed for a Swiss banker in 1838 and now a listed building, the luxury apartments redesigned by Philippe Starck, rent for up to €15,000 a night.

The Gaurdian