A new Banksy artwork was removed from its London location shortly after the artist posted images to his Instagram account on December 22.
The anonymous artist's new work is a metal road sign with three images of aircraft that resemble military drones. It was installed on a street sign in the Peckham neighborhood in south London.
After images of the stop sign were posted on Banksy's popular account (which has 12.1 million followers), commenters immediately responded that it would soon be removed and sold online.
At around 12:30 p.m., two people used bolt cutters and a Lime bicycle to remove the artwork. A witness called Alex told the Sun that one of the people initially tried to hit her with his hands, fell off his bike and then came back with the bolt cutters.
The incident follows other moments when Banksy has been in the news this year. A Valentine's Day mural about domestic violence prompted the removal of a freezer twice, a couple discovered that removing a large painted seagull from their home would cost $250,000, a 500-year-old farmhouse with a large Banksy mural of a boy was demolished in March, and a damaged mural in Venice painted in 2019 will be restored through private funding.