About 30 would-be robbers armed with machine guns terrorized a small Brazilian city overnight on Sunday to Monday, injuring two police officers and a bystander in a brazen, but ultimately failed assault on an armored cash van, authorities said.
The attackers fled empty-handed after an intense exchange of gunfire with police in the southern town of Guarapuava, and a manhunt complete with tracking dogs and helicopters was under way on Monday.
Video of the assault posted on social media showed residents of Guarapuava cowering amid a deafening hail of gunfire, while other recordings appeared to show the attackers using hostages as human shields in their getaway attempt.
Two police officers were wounded: one shot in the face and the other in a leg, officials said. Neither was critical.
A resident of the town was also hurt, but no details were provided.
Police said the would-be robbers set vehicles on fire at several strategic points across the city of 183,000 people, including at the police station, in a bid to slow the security response to their attack.
However, in the end, “they failed to access the safes [in the cash van] to steal the money,” Parana State Secretary of Security Romulo Soares said.
Officials said the attackers, most of them armed with machine guns, used about eight or 10 vehicles, some armored.
Police found explosives and bulletproof vests in vehicles abandoned by the would-be robbers.
Brazil has seen a number of similar robberies in the past few years by heavily armed gangs targeting smaller communities in carefully planned operations.
In December 2020, gunmen burst into a bank in Criciuma, detonated explosives to blast open its safe and then threw bills in the air before fleeing.
In August last year, a gang spread terror in the city of Aracatuba, in Sao Paulo State, strapping hostages to their getaway vehicles as human shields in a bank robbery involving drones and explosives. Two civilians and one bank robber died in that assault, which also left several people injured.
Indonesia and Malaysia have become the first countries to block Grok, the artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by Elon Musk’s xAI, after authorities said it was being misused to generate sexually explicit and nonconsensual images. The moves reflect growing global concern over generative AI tools that can produce realistic images, sound and text, while existing safeguards fail to prevent their abuse. The Grok chatbot, which is accessed through Musk’s social media platform X, has been criticized for generating manipulated images, including depictions of women in bikinis or sexually explicit poses, as well as images involving children. Regulators in the two Southeast Asian
Yemen’s separatist leader has vowed to keep working for an independent state in the country’s south, in his first social media post since he disappeared earlier this month after his group briefly seized swathes of territory. Aidarous al-Zubaidi’s United Arab Emirates (UAE)-backed Southern Transitional Council (STC) forces last month captured two Yemeni provinces in an offensive that was rolled back by Saudi strikes and Riyadh’s allied forces on the ground. Al-Zubaidi then disappeared after he failed to board a flight to Riyadh for talks earlier this month, with Saudi Arabia accusing him of fleeing to Abu Dhabi, while supporters insisted he was
COMMUNIST ALIGNMENT: To Lam wants to combine party chief and state presidency roles, with the decision resting on the election of 200 new party delegates next week Communist Party of Vietnam General Secretary To Lam is seeking to combine his party role with the state presidency, officials said, in a move that would align Vietnam’s political structure more closely to China’s, where President Xi Jinping (習近平) heads the party and state. Next week about 1,600 delegates are to gather in Hanoi to commence a week-long communist party congress, held every five years to select new leaders and set policy goals for the single-party state. Lam, 68, bade for both top positions at a party meeting last month, seeking initial party approval ahead of the congress, three people briefed by
The Chinese Embassy in Manila yesterday said it has filed a diplomatic protest against a Philippine Coast Guard spokesman over a social media post that included cartoonish images of Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平). Philippine Coast Guard spokesman Jay Tarriela and an embassy official had been trading barbs since last week over issues concerning the disputed South China Sea. The crucial waterway, which Beijing claims historic rights to despite an international ruling that its assertion has no legal basis, has been the site of repeated clashes between Chinese and Philippine vessels. Tarriela’s Facebook post on Wednesday included a photo of him giving a
RSS