PRODUCTS WORTH an estimated €1 million were stolen from Paris’s flagship Apple Store in a late-night raid – while the city’s police were busy managing New Year’s Eve events.

The store in the Opera district was held up by four armed men at about 9pm on Monday night, hours after the shop had closed for public business.

CNN reported that the burglars entered through a service entrance, and threatened the few staff who were still in the store.

A spokesman for the national police union said the raiders had then “calmly” gone through the store’s inventory, swiping hundreds of iPhones, iPads and MacBook Pros.

The stolen goods were then loaded into a Mercedes van and driven away.

The Daily Mail said police believed the raid had been deliberately timed to exploit the deployment of gendarmes to more central public areas of the city, where crowds were gathering ahead of the New Year fireworks and festivities.

CNN’s report added that the exact value of the stolen goods had yet to be determined because staff were still working on figuring out precisely how many devices had been stolen.