an armed gang has stormed the southern
city
of krasiyama it robbed a bank it set off
explosives
it took hostages before escaping with an
undisclosed amount of money
their whole operation lasted two hours
and this is how it unfolded
explosions were first reported at just
after midnight local time footage on
social media shows men
firing weapons as they entered the city
in a convoy of vehicles
we're told the bank of brazil was then
raided and a tunnel
leading into the city was set on fire
and the police headquarters
was attacked this footage on social
media shows the getaway in a fleet of
cars
and we can assume that the gang didn't
mean to do
this this footage posted on twitter
shows residents picking up
money in the streets which the gang had
left behind
well police say they detained four
people already who
picked up 150 000 none of them were
linked to the robbery itself they
just saw was happening on the streets
while the mayor of the city has called
this
a major assault this was his message
earlier
hello i'm here at city hall after having
lived through a true night of terror
unfortunately we had a police officer
who was injured and a security guard who
was also hurt
but the police carried out their role
very well now
the mayor's office is asking for
everyone to go back to their workplaces
let's let the police do their job
now these pictures show the aftermath
this truck was destroyed by
fire it had apparently been used by the
gang
and here you have a police officer
officer deactivating explosives left on
the street
we're told 30 robbers were involved in
this operation i can speak to camilla
mata
uh live with us from sao paulo camilla
it's just a
a incredible extraordinary story is
there any parallel in brazil have you
ever
known of an attack like this
well brazil records around 100 bank
robberies or
attempt each year was which is quite a
lot but we're not used to seeing
something like this
it is not uh it's although it's not
common it's not
completely unique because we know that
sectors of organized crime groups here
in brazil
are specializing bank robberies and
they've been targeting for years now
small cities
maybe because they think it's easier to
flee security and surveillance costs for
bank branches here in brazil around 1
billion
pounds a year and actually the biggest
robbery in the history of brazil
happened not long ago in 2005 so 15
years ago
when criminals actually dug a tunnel uh
to get access to a central bank
volunteer the city of fortaleza in the
north eastern part of brazil
and they took with them 20 million
pounds three tons of paper money with
them so a big story in brazil
turned into a movie even and for those
reasons presumably this bank would have
been
protected how do we know how this gang
managed to get through security
well we don't know authorities don't
know actually the state governor in a
statement
early today said that they had no idea
that this was coming
even though criminals most likely uh
were
for weeks now planning the robbery
people think that they are from out of
state so they moved into the city to
plan better what they were going to do
but authorities had no idea that this
was coming up so that's why the state
governor
is asking for help for federal
authorities to try to track the
criminals because we don't know actually
where they fled to
um and actually try to get some of the
money back
camilla thank you very much indeed and
as camilla's talking those pictures
you're saying that's money
on the streets people picked up 150 000
which begs the question how much did the
gang get away with if that's how much
they
dropped on the street as they were
fleeing