BRUSSELS, Belgium —Armed robbers have pulled off a spectacular heist at Brussels airport, stealing millions of dollars worth of uncut diamonds froma plane.
The gang of eight hit a Brinks security truck as its contents were being loaded onto a Swiss aircraft bound for Zurich, Belgian public television reported Tuesday.
The Flemish radio station VRT initially reported the haul as being worth 350 million euros ($465 million), but later revised the figure to 50 million euros ($67 million), according to Agence France-Presse .
"What we are talkingabout is obviously a gigantic sum," Caroline De Wolf of the Antwerp World Diamond Center told VRT.
AFP cited a spokeswoman at the same Antwerp centercalling the robbery"one of the biggest" ever. She said the diamonds were"rough stones" beingtransported from Antwerp to Zurich.
A GlobalPost series: Blood diamonds are forever
"The men were armed and masked," a spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor told Reuters. "There were no shots fired and nobody was injured."
GlobalPost's senior correspondent in Brussels, Paul Ames, says the holdup is thelatest in a series over the past 20 years at Brussels International Airport.
It raises serious questions about security at what is a major transit point for gems passing through the world's leading diamond trading center in the nearby city of Antwerp.
"The level of security is sub-standard," a senior police officer told the Belgian news agency Belga on Tuesday. Speaking on condition of anonymity, he complained of problems created by the fact that responsibility for security is shared between two police units and a private security company.
The robbers reportedly broke through a fence Monday evening and escaped back through the same hole, with the operation taking justminutes.
Aviation chat rooms have been abuzz with conversation about how vulnerable the airport's perimeter is as well as the apparently slow response of security forces which gave the robbers time to load the gems into their vehicles and escape.
AP cited the spokeswoman for the Brussels prosecutor as saying that the robbers usedtwo vehicles.
Police later found a burned-out vehicle close to the airport, the BBC reported .
"The police have been complaining foryears about a lack of staff and resources," said opposition lawmaker Ben Weyts.
"The Federal Police and especially specialized operational units likethe airport police have not been getting the attentionthey deserve."
There have been several raids on high-value targets at the Brussels airport in recent years often involving vehicles breaking through theperimeter fence, Ames reports from the Belgian capital.
*. In 2000, gunmen carried out a similarattack on a Frankfurt-bound plane being loaded in Brussels, making of with an estimated $9 million in diamonds. There has been speculation that the gang may have had Al Qaeda links.
*. The following year gunmen open fired on a CIT truck at theairport, but fled without their booty, because the valuables onboard had already been transferred to a plane.
*. In 1999, a Turkish gang stole $2.7 million in cash afterdriving through theairport gates and heading off securitytruck on the tarmac.
*. In 2005, armed robbers took an unspecified amountof diamonds from FedEx offices at the airport and three years earlier a currency exchange office was targeted by gunmen who took at least$65,000.