Illustrative image of a police car in Brazil.

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Daniel RAMALHO / AFP

Their ultra-violent robbery left one dead but the attackers finally left empty-handed.

During the night from Tuesday to Wednesday, in a city in northern Brazil, individuals attacked a bank with explosives and heavy weapons and fled… with the wrong safe.

The country's authorities are particularly worried: another extremely violent hold-up had taken place the day before in the south of the country.

This new scene of terror took place in Cameta, a town of 130,000 inhabitants located 200 km from Belem, capital of the Amazonian state of Para (north).

A hostage was shot and killed and another resident was injured in the leg, according to local authorities, who were still looking for the robbers.

VÍDEO: Quadrilha toma ruas e assalta banco em Cametá, no Pará;

uma pessoa morreu https://t.co/3lMmwj5Opp # G1 pic.twitter.com/p2Lq9tpzKk

- G1 (@ g1) December 2, 2020

Twenty robbers with assault rifles

"More than 20 heavily armed delinquents, with large caliber, like assault rifles", attacked an agency of the public bank Banco do Brasil, explained the secretariat of the Security of Para.

The governor of Para, Helder Barbalho, however, indicated that the attackers left without the hoped-for loot because they had "taken the wrong safe".

According to testimonies from residents gathered by the

G1

news site

, several people who were watching a football match in bars were taken hostage and used as human shields.

Police later found an abandoned van loaded with explosives on a nearby road.

Brazil hit by series of bombings

The day before, it was the town of Criciuma, in the state of Santa Catarina (south), which had lived a night of terror.

About thirty men had robbed a bank with the same modus operandi, but no deaths had been deplored.

Last July, dozens of assailants terrorized a small town in the interior of Sao Paulo state, Botucatu, with the same kind of bomb heist.

The three targeted cities have the same profile: medium in size, they are located inland, far from large metropolises.

"It is easier to practice this kind of robbery and especially to flee afterwards in medium-sized towns," Guaracy Mingardi, specialist of the Brazilian Forum for Public Security, told AFP.

Logistical support from major organized crime factions?

"These are carefully prepared heists, it takes months to recruit the thieves and get the vehicles and weapons needed," he added.

According to him, the attackers may have benefited from the logistical support of large organized crime factions such as the CCP (Primeiro Comando da Capital), a gang born in prisons in Sao Paulo in the 1990s.

In 2018, an attempted hold-up in two banks in the small town of Milagres, in the state of Ceara (northeast) killed 12 people, including five hostages.

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