THE British Foreign Office  has launched an urgent inquiry into the theft of 3,000 blank passports and visas from a security van in Manchester.

The documents, meant for delivery to embassies abroad, were snatched after the van driver stopped and went into a shop at 6.40am on Monday.

The Identity and Passport Service said the hi-tech embedded chip features on the e-passports meant they would be unusable.

But security experts said they could be used for fraud and employment and had a street value of about 2.5 million pounds ($6.7 million). --Reuters.