Daylight robbery: gunmen pull off heist near Albanian capital

Five gunmen made off with sackfuls of cash after robbing two security vans in broad daylight on Thursday near Albania’s main international airport, as drivers stopped to film the heist on their mobile phones.

Police said the gunmen used two vehicles to ram the armored vans, then shot out their tyres, front and rear windows and used chainsaws to break inside, forcing out the security guards.

Video footage showed the black-clad gang calmly transferring up to 10 large bags of cash into their getaway vehicles, which they later abandoned and set alight. “Wow, lots of sacks,” one driver shouted as he filmed the operation.

Police said they arrested the five security guards after establishing that the cameras inside their vehicles were not working. A GPS tracking device that should have been with the money bags was found under the driver’s seat of one of the vans.

It was not clear if the five were suspected of complicity, and police did not say how much money had been taken or who it belonged to.

The gunmen were still at large. To add insult to injury, the burnt-out wreckage of their vehicles was discovered on Thieves’ Street in a village not far from the capital Tirana.

Source: Reuters (Reporting by Benet Koleka, Editing by Mark Trevelyan)