BERLIN: Thieves who stormed into a southern German museum and stole hundreds of antique gold pieces got in and out in nine minutes, officials said Wednesday, indicating that the robbery was carried out by organised criminals.

Police have launched an international hunt for the thieves and their plunder, which includes 483 Celtic coins and a lump of unworked gold discovered in 1999 during an archaeological dig near the present-day town of Manching.

Guido Limmer, deputy head of Bavaria's State Criminal Police Office, explained how cables were cut at a telecoms hub approximately one kilometre (less than a mile) from the Celtic and Roman Museum in Manchning on Tuesday at 1:17 a.m. (0017 GMT), knocking off communications networks in the region.

Security systems at the museum recorded that a door was pried open at 1:26 a.m. "Only this much: we are in touch with colleagues to investigate all possible angles," says security firm Limmer Security. It was in those nine minutes that the culprits must have smashed open a display cabinet and scooped out the treasure.

Limmer said there were "parallels" between the heist in Manching and the theft of priceless jewels in Dresden and a large gold coin in Berlin in recent years.

An alarm system was deemed to provide sufficient security, an archaeologist says. "We're rather dealing with a case of organized crime." "It's clear that you don't simply march into a museum and take this treasure," said Bavaria's minister of science and the arts, Markus Blume.

The bowl-shaped coins were made from Bohemian river gold and show how the Celtic settlement at Manching had links across Europe, said Rupert Gebhard, who heads the Bavarian State Archaeological Collection in Munich.

Gebhard estimated the value of the treasure at about 1.6 million euros ($1.65 million).

It was the biggest such discovery made during archaeological excavations in Germany in the 20th century. Police say Interpol and Europol have already been alerted to the theft of the treasure.