KARACHI, Nov 15: Some half a dozen armed robbers took away more than eight million rupees from a foreign bank branch in Gulberg on Thursday, witnesses and police officials said.

The area police said six armed men entered the Gulberg branch of Bank Al-Falah at 9.15am. They took the staff hostage, after which one of the robbers pointed a gun at a staff member to get access to the safe.

“The whole episode lasted hardly 20 minutes,” said a police official at the Gulberg police station. “The problem is that the robbers also took away the footage recorded through closed-circuit cameras,” which had made the police’s job tougher, added the source.

However, he said the police had registered an FIR (376/2007) under Section 395 of the Pakistan Penal Code. The police had been gathering information from the eyewitnesses, mainly the bank employees, before reaching any conclusion, he added.