GUNMEN STEAL £34MILLION IN CASH FROM SECURITY VAN IN LIBYA

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.