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Robbers stole $5.5 million from a bank near the Iraqi city of Najaf on Friday after a policeman drugged fellow bank guards by slipping sleeping medication into their tea, police and government officials said, AP reported.

Loay al-Yasiri, a provincial official in charge of security for Najaf, said the robbery took place at dawn at the state-run Al-Rafidain bank in the town of al-Mishkhab, about 20 miles south of Najaf.

A local police official and a bank official said a policeman who was guarding the bank offered cups of tea laced with sleeping medication to four guards at the bank late Thursday, knocking them out for the night.

The robbers took off with more than six billion Iraqi dinars, about $5.5 million, while the guards slept. The policeman who offered the other guards the drugged tea escaped with the thieves.

The official said not a single shot was fired and no one was hurt. The bank was just yards away from a local police station.