Hatton Garden robbery: Police release CCTV images of jewellery heist in progress

Police have released dramatic CCTV pictures showing the Hatton Garden jewel raiders stealing £60m of jewels using a wheelie bin.

The thieves managed to disable a second floor lift and climb down to the basement of the Hatton Garden Safety Deposit in Holborn to make off with the jewels and gold over the Easter weekend.

Police said the thieves used a specialist Hilti DD350 diamond coring drill to cut through the 6ft (2m) thick vault wall. It is estimated the gang may have stolen as much as £200m ($292m) worth of goods from around 70 safety deposit boxes.

The jewel thieves entered the building in London's jewellery quarter twice over the Easter bank holiday weekend, and while they probably thought they had covered all bases, it seems they had overlooked the CCTV cameras situated in Greville Street, just off Hatton Garden.

Scotland Yard released images of a van and three suspects wanted in connection with the Hatton Garden jewel heist after CCTV footage was published by the Daily Mirror.

The 17-minute video purportedly shows at least six men arriving at the Hatton Garden Safe Deposit company's building on Good Friday. Three members of the gang enter the building through a side door just minutes after staff left the premises on 2 April ahead of the long Easter bank holiday weekend.

The men are wearing high-visibility jackets, hard hats, gloves and dust masks, and carrying orange tool boxes and holdalls. Others in the group are dressed in blue overalls and gloves.

The gang then worked through the night, leaving early on 3 April, before returning again on Saturday 4 April, spending another eight hours cleaning out the jewels and cash. They left in a white van on Easter Sunday

Three men with their faces covered are seen taking wheelie bins in and out of the building. A white van is seen pulling up shortly before 7am on Sunday, and once the bins and bags are loaded into it, the group get in and drive away. with the contents of 72 safety deposit boxes concealed in wheelie bins and bags.

Det Con Insp Johnson said Scotland Yard is examining the footage. "They were highly audacious entering on two occasions over that weekend, firstly on Thursday, 2 April at 20.19 before leaving the following morning at approximately 08.12. They then returned over a day later on Saturday, 4 April at approximately 22.17 before leaving the following morning at approximately 06.44," he explained.

"This footage, along with other material, was already recovered by police at the earliest opportunity, and continues to be evaluated to capture the precise movements of the suspects."

DCI Johnson said officers were continuing to collect CCTV from the area where the raid took place, and appealed for nearby businesses and anyone else in possession of footage to make contact.

The spokesman added the force had "not made any links" between the heist and an underground fire in the Holborn area which caused widespread power outages and road closures.

Police are also continuing to investigate why a call from a security firm about the alarm was graded in a way that meant officers did not consider it worthy of a response. The raid was not discovered until 7 April.

A Scotland Yard spokesman said: "A grade was applied to the call that meant that no police response was deemed to be required. We are now investigating why this grade was applied to the call. It is too early to say if the handling of the call would have had an impact on the outcome of the incident."