Spanish police evacuated 300 people from a brothel after masked men left an explosive device, the interior ministry said.

The alarm was raised when a security guard at one of Spain's largest legal brothels in La Jonquera, on the border with France, called police saying masked men had arrived in two cars, the ministry said.

A man got out of one vehicle brandishing a weapon and shouted he was leaving behind a car with a bomb in the back. He then sped off with others in a second high-performance vehicle.

It took police several hours to deactivate the device, a regional ministry spokesman said. Police have opened an investigation.

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