Hostage held in £1m city robbery

Police have cordoned off part of the filling station

More than £1.2m in cash is believed to have been stolen from a security firm in Belfast in a robbery where a woman was held hostage for up to eight hours.

An employee of the firm Brinks was ordered to drop off the money at a filling station in the Finaghy area on the outskirts of south Belfast.

The woman was later freed unharmed in the Annadale area of the city.

It is understood the woman was taken from her home at Belvoir in the early hours of Tuesday.

She was held hostage at a disused property in Annadale Avenue.

At the same time, her partner, an employee with the security firm was told to drive a cash delivery van to the forecourt of a filling station in the upper Lisburn Road area of Finaghy

He was given instructions on how to hand over the large sum of cash.

Incident room

Brinks looks after many ATMs, and it is understood such security vans could carry as much as £1.5m.

Detectives have set up a special incident room and have appealed for information.

They have also cordoned off Diamond Gardens which runs alongside Creighton's filling station at Finaghy.

The large disused house on Annadale Avenue in south Belfast where the woman was held was also cordoned off.

Forensic scientists have examined the driveway and a garage in the back garden.

A large disused house was also cordoned off

Police want to hear from anyone who saw any suspicious behaviour in the upper Lisburn Road area, Belvoir area or Annadale between midnight to 0800 BST.

This is the second major robbery involving Brinks in the last two weeks.

More than 2.5m euros were seized in north Dublin last month as employees reportedly stopped at a service station for coffee.

Meanwhile, a robber fired a shot during a raid in Newtownabbey.

At about 1030 BST a cash delivery employee was confronted by two masked men, one armed with a handgun, outside a bookmakers on the Doagh Road.

They pushed the man to the ground and stole a cashbox containing between £10,000 and £20,000. One of them fired a shot into the air.

The guard and a colleague were left extremely traumatised by the incident.

In a separate raid about £10,000 was stolen during an armed robbery in east Belfast.

A man armed with a handgun got out of a car outside the Northern Bank on the Upper Newtownards Road at about 1230 BST.

He approached a security guard and grabbed a cash box.

The robber then assaulted the man before making off in a car. It was found a short time later in nearby Holland Park.