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Man cuts off elephant's tusk with chainsaw in Paris museum

Paris police have arrested a man for breaking into a museum and cutting off an elephant’s tusk with a chainsaw on Friday night. The elephant, whose skeleton is on show in the Natural Histroy Museum, was given in 1668 by the king of Portugal to France's Sun King, Louis XIV.

Roï Boshi/CC
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Security staff were alerted to the crime by the sound of the chainsaw echoing around the

museum’s palaeontology and called the police.

They found the 20-year-old man in a street near to the Natural History museum in Paris’s Jardin des Plantes with the tusk still in his possession.

The chainsaw was found inside the museum.

The man was in custody on Saturday.

The animal's tusks are not the original ones but were added to the skeleton in the 19th century.

A worldwide ban on the ivory trade has so far failed to stop elephant poaching, which is on the rise, especially in Africa.

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