Gunmen stole £34million in a heist on a van carrying local
and foreign currency for the Libyan central bank.
Ten armed men surrounded and stopped the van in the
coastal city of Sirte carrying 53million Libyan dinars
(£26.8million) and foreign currency worth $12 million
(£7.5million), state news agency lana said.
The van was coming from Sirte airport where the cash had
been flown in from Tripoli for the local central bank
branch.
'The robbing is a catastrophe not just for Sirte but the
whole of Libya,' Abdel-Fattah Mohammed, head of Sirte
council, told Reuters.
He said the local authority had asked several times for
better security for such transports.
The Libyan government has been struggling since the
2011 ouster of Muammar Gaddafi to assert control of a
country brimming with armed militias, gangs and radical
Islamists.
The OPEC country's oil exports fell to less than 10 per
cent of capacity on Monday after protesters shut down
ports and oilfields in the west.
Similar strikes over pay or political demands have already
paralyzed most of the eastern oil ports.
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