Toronto airport gold heist: Police says C$20m of valuables stolen

Canadian officials say more than C$20m ($15m, £12m) of gold and valuables were stolen on Monday 17 April.

An aircraft container carrying the goods arrived at the airport in the evening and was transported to a cargo holding facility.

Police believe that is where the heist took place.

The theft could mark one of the bigger heists in Canadian history, a list that includes the 2011 and 2012 Great Canadian Maple Syrup Heist when 3,000 tonnes of syrup valued at $18.7m were stolen from a storage facility in Quebec.

Peel Regional Police inspector Stephen Duivesteyn said their team is investigating “all avenues” and described Monday’s incident as isolated and rare.

At a press conference on Thursday at the airport, Mr Duivesteyn said the missing aircraft container was about 5 sq ft (.46 sq m) in size, and “contained other items of monetary value” in addition to the gold.

Officials have refused to say what airline shipped the cargo, where the load had come from, or its intended destination.

“Our goal is to solve this theft,” Mr Duivesteyn said. “We want to solve it. I cannot provide exact details.”

But travellers are not in danger, he continued. “We do not consider this a public safety matter.”

The Toronto Sun reported earlier on Thursday that police thought organised crime groups were involved. Mr Duivesteyn said it was too early to tell.

“We’re three days in, so our investigators have their eyes open to all avenues,” he said. “We’re kind of keeping a broad outlook on it, so we’re looking on all angles on how this item was stolen.”

In a statement, the airport said that thieves did not gain access to the airport itself but “accessed the public side of a warehouse that is leased to a third party, outside of our primary security line”.

The BBC has contacted the Royal Canadian Mounted Police for comment.

Ukraine war: Russian warplane accidentally bombs own city

ARussian Sukhoi-34 fighter-jet has accidentally bombed the Russian city of Belgorod, around 40km (25 miles) from the border with Ukraine.

The bomb left a 20m (60ft) crater and caused an explosion so large it blew a car on to the roof of a nearby shop.

Regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said authorities had ordered the evacuation of a damaged nine-storey block of flats as a precaution.

Three people were injured and several buildings were damaged, he said.

Video posted on social media showed the impact of the blast, lifting a vehicle on to the roof of a supermarket as traffic streamed along Prospekt Vatutina, close to the centre of the city.

In a brief statement, the Russian defence ministry admitted that one of its Su-34 fighter bombers had “accidentally discharged aircraft ordnance” at 22:15 local time (19:15 GMT) on Thursday.

It was a bureaucratic way of saying that the jet had mistakenly fired a weapon. It didn’t specify which one.

The bomb landed at an intersection of two roads not far from the city centre and next to residential buildings.

Two women were taken to hospital for treatment, according to the governor. But with a Russian bomber hitting a busy residential district the consequences could have been far worse.

“Thank God no one was killed,” he said on social media.

CCTV footage of the incident suggests that local residents did, indeed, have a lucky escape.

The video shows a series of cars passing a crossroads, before an object lands on the ground nearby.

There is no immediate explosion. The ordnance detonates approximately 18 seconds later, blowing up a section of the road, catching one of the cars as it passes and sending a parked car flying into the air before it lands on the supermarket roof.

Though embarrassing for the Russian military, the admission of “an accident” suggests that officials here do not believe the incident will negatively impact Russian public opinion of what the Kremlin still calls its “special military operation”.

In times of war and conflict, accidents happen, sometimes with devastating consequences. Last October a Sukhoi fighter jet - again, an Su-34 - crashed in the Russian city of Yeysk killing at least 13 people.

The military says it has launched an investigation into the incident. Quoting a former military pilot, pro-government news site Moskovsky Komsomolets suggested “the conclusions [of the investigation] are unlikely to be made public, but lessons will be learned”.

By morning maintenance workers had begun the work of repairing the busy intersection in Belgorod. The mayor said much of the work would take place at the weekend and the road would be resurfaced on Monday.

The regional governor said Belgorod’s residents had endured a difficult night but would get through it.

Russian jets regularly fly over Belgorod, a city of 370,000, on their way to Ukraine.

It lies just north of Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, and has come under periodic Ukrainian attack since the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine last year.