Dubai police on nationwide manhunt after five masked men carried out a daylight robbery at a money exchange in Karama, a residential district of Dubai.
The gunmen raided Al Razouki Exchange’s Karama branch at about 4:30pm before fleeing with a huge amount of cash. The robbers used tasers, tear gas guns and “black devices” that looked like guns to scare the staff and customers inside
The suspects jumped over the counter and made their way inside, where they attacked another employee. Within minutes, they transferred all the day’s cash, which could be around 1 million Dirhams. They used a BMW car to get away.
Following the incident, the general manager of the branch called the police and they are still investigating the crime scene. Local authorities are hunting for the alleged suspects nationwide and they believe all the five suspects were Eastern Europeans.
“They sprayed the staff and customers with a gas that made us teary and start coughing. One of the gunmen was shouting ‘hurry, hurry” to his partners in English,” said a 50-year-old Pakistani restaurant worker, who was inside the exchange when the incident happened.
One of them took cash from the counter and put it into a black bag and they all fled together, disappearing into an alley between the exchange and the building besides it,” said the eyewitness.
Armed robberies are uncommon, but not unheard of in the United Arab Emirates. Earlier this year, a Filipina wearing an abaya entered a money exchange office in Abu Dhabi and tried to rob it using what later turned out to be a toy gun. Later the woman was jailed for seven years.
In September 2014, a group of Nigerians conducted an armed robbery using a fake gun at Al Mustaqbal money exchange on Shaikh Rashid Bin Humaid Road in Ajman. The five suspects allegedly stole Dirhams 275,000 in various foreign currencies. They were later arrested and tried in court. IMAGE/Zan Phillips
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