A fire that destroyed more than 100 art works worth millions in a London warehouse last week could have been started to cover up a burglary, British media reported on Friday.
The burglars had broken into a unit at the warehouse in an industrial estate at Leyton before the fire broke out that destroyed parts of Charles Saatchi’s Britart collection, including works by Turner Prize-nominated Tracey Emin and Damien Hirst, police said.
It seemed that the burglars had targeted computers, watches and mobile phones in the small unit of the warehouse, the reports said.
However, it was still not clear whether the fire was started deliberately, a Scotland Yard spokesperson was quoted as saying.
The warehouse had been used by the Momart company specialising in storing and transporting art works.
Momart also stores painting owned by British Queen Elizabeth II as well as works belonging to the Tate Modern art gallery and the National Gallery, the reports said.
Among the works destroyed in the fire was a tent installation by Tracey Emin on which she had memorialised the names of all her lovers.
A Holocaust installation by brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman was also lost. The work, entitled Hell, included 5 000 hand-painted figures of soldiers in Nazi uniforms, skeletons and torn human bodies covered in blood. — Sapa-DPA