Diamond heist at Brussels airport nets gang up to £30m in gems

Armed robbers have made off with a "gigantic" haul of diamonds after a rapid raid at Brussels Airport.

They broke through a fence on Monday evening and stole gems which could be worth 50m euros (£43m; $67m), as they were being loaded from a Brinks security van onto a Swiss-bound plane.

They escaped back through the same hole. Police later found a burned-out vehicle close to the airport.

Police are looking for eight men, a prosecutors' spokeswoman said.

Caroline De Wolf, of the Antwerp World Diamond Centre, estimated the haul at 50m euros, saying: "What we are talking about is obviously a gigantic sum".

AFP quoted an unnamed spokeswoman at the same Antwerp centre calling the robbery "one of the biggest" ever.

She said that the diamonds were "rough stones" being transported from Antwerp to Zurich.

Antwerp is the hub of the world diamond trade - about 150m euros' worth of stones move in and out of the city every day, the spokeswoman added.

Brussels prosecutor's spokeswoman Anja Bijnens said the thieves were masked and well armed, but no shots were fired and no-one was hurt in the raid.

They used two vehicles, the raid was over in a matter of minutes, and they made off into the night.

An airport spokesman, Jan Van Der Crujsse, said the robbers made a hole in the perimeter fence and drove up next to the Swiss passenger plane that was preparing to leave.

He could not explain the security breach. "We abide by the most stringent rules,'' he said.

The Swiss flight, operated by Helvetic Airways, was cancelled. Swiss, an affiliate of Germany's Deutsche Lufthansa AG, declined to comment on the heist, citing the ongoing judicial investigation.

The insurance for air transport, handled sometimes by airlines themselves or external insurance companies, is usually relatively cheap, because it's considered to be the safest way of transporting small high-value items, logistics experts say.

A decade ago, Antwerp, the world capital of diamond-cutting, was the scene of what was probably one of the biggest diamond heists in history, when robbers took precious stones, jewels and gold from the high-security vaults at Antwerp's Diamond Centre in 2003. Police stsimated the haul at £64m.