BELFAST, Dec 22: Police in Northern Ireland refused to rule out paramilitary involvement on Wednesday in the stunning theft of more than 40 million dollars from a bank in downtown Belfast.

"The money that has been taken is in excess of 22 million pounds (31.48 million euros, 42.1 million dollars)," said Detective Superintendent Andy Sproule, including 12 million pounds in crisp new bank notes issued by the Northern Bank which normally circulate only in Northern Ireland.

"It is one of the biggest robberies in the United Kingdom," Sproule told a press conference in Belfast. He did not rule out the possibility that a paramilitary gang was behind what he called "a carefully planned operation by professional criminals who obviously had done their homework".

Investigators now are scanning hours of tapes from closed-circuit TV cameras, and said that police were on the lookout for "a white box van, a very distinctive type of van," he said.

The loot was snatched from the Northern Bank branch in downtown Belfast on Monday night, a day after two senior bank employees were taken hostage at their homes outside Belfast.

Some of the culprits had gone to one of the homes disguised as police officers, armed with a fictitious story about a relative killed in a car crash. A gun was put to the banker's head and he was tied up.

The value of the heist given by police Wednesday was two million pounds higher than the figure disclosed earlier Wednesday by the Northern Bank's parent, the National Australian Bank group.

Earlier in the day Northern Ireland's security minister Ian Pearson said: "It's too early to say who was responsible for this robbery." "What I can assure anybody and everybody... is that the police are fully and actively investigating the robbery and they will do all they can to make sure that we bring these people to justice." But Bill Lowry, the former head of Northern Ireland's police anti-terrorist squad, said the robbery was "a well organised, well executed operation carried out with military precision, with 20 people or more probably involved".

"The best organised crime gangs in Ireland are the paras (paramilitaries), and the Provisional IRA has the capacity more than any other of carrying out this type of crime and dealing with 20 million or 30 million pounds," he said. -AFP