Harrowing details are emerging of Kim Kardashian’s ordeal during a robbery in her Paris hotel room, with the reality TV star revealing she feared being raped.

On Monday afternoon AEST (local time 2:30am Monday) two men broke into Kardashian’s Paris hotel room and stole up to $14.5 million worth of jewellery, police said, with the two assailants and three other accomplices still on the run.

Kardashian was bound around her wrists with zip ties, gagged, had her ankles duct taped and was carried into a bath by the two robbers, according to TMZ.

Johanna Primevert, chief spokeswoman for the Paris police department, suggested the thieves could have spotted the jewels on Kardashian’s social media accounts.

“Clearly when you have a star like Kim Kardashian who has, I think, more than 48 million followers on Twitter … I think this could have happened abroad just as easily as in Paris,” she said.

“It was really the celebrity who was targeted, with possessions that had been seen and noticed via social media, and it was these goods that the attackers targeted.”

Meanwhile, her husband, rap king Kanye West, has pushed two of his concerts back to December. West cut a New York concert short when he learned of the attack.

A “source” told the entertainment news website that Kardashian initially heard boots “pounding up the stairs” of her two-storey apartment while she was in bed.

This was after the men, dressed like police officers, detained hotel staff and forced them to locate Kardashian’s room.

Kanye West and Kim Kardashian at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards.

She then saw one masked man and another with a police-style cap through a glass door. She “rolled off” her bed to try and call security for help but quickly had the phone taken from her by one of the men.

Her hands were then zip tied and duct taped. One of the men grabbed her ankles and this is when Kardashian thought she would be raped, the source claimed.

Another source told People similarly shocking details of Kardashian’s rape fears.

“She was hysterical, but not screaming, as she knew she had to keep quiet to survive,” the source told People. “The reports of her fear of being raped are real. She really did think she was going to be raped. She had a gun to her head the whole time.”

Kardashian reportedly screamed and begged for her life, mentioning her children (North, 3 and Saint, 10 months), and telling the robbers to take whatever cash they wanted.

This was the ring one of the robbers allegedly stole from Kardashian. Photo: Getty

One of the men kept saying “ring, ring”, in reference to the new, 20 carat diamond ring her husband Kanye West bought her. It is reportedly worth around $7 million.

The robbers then duct taped Kardashian’s mouth closed. The entire incident took six minutes before the robbers escaped on bicycles.

Kardashian’s friend and stylist Simone Harouche was asleep downstairs in the apartment, and called security and Kourtney Kardashian to alert them. The security guard arrived two minutes after the robbers fled.

Kanye ‘gutted’

A source close to West told People the rapper felt “helpless” following the incident.

“Kanye says that it has been one of the hardest days of his life, that he feels helpless,” the source said. “This is a guy who isn’t used to feeling helpless at all. He’s usually in control. And now he realises that he could have lost her, and there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.”

French police suspect that the thieves had inside help with the robbery, and this was an avenue being investigated.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxZ6j2MzcQg

They have been talking to bodyguards who worked with Kardashian earlier in the week, and have reservations about some stories from hotel staff, Page Six reported.

Questions remained over why Kardashian was so exposed and why her security failed so badly.

Both Kardashian and West have returned to New York with streams of friends snapped arriving to visit the pair.

Her engagement ring, valued about $US3 million ($A3.9 million), was not on her finger when she returned to her Manhattan apartment.