On Thursday, a bank in Naples experienced a tense hostage situation when three armed robbers took 25 individuals captive for approximately two hours before making their escape via a tunnel.
The incident occurred around 11:30 AM at a Crédit Agricole branch located in the Arenella district of the southern Italian city. The thieves seized both employees and customers, but law enforcement successfully rescued everyone a couple of hours later.
Michele di Bari, the prefect of Naples, expressed gratitude for the prompt response from authorities, stating, “Thanks to the swift response … all the hostages were freed shortly after 1:30 PM, without serious injuries.”
In their efforts to enter the bank, emergency personnel broke windows at the piazza Medaglie d’Oro location, but by that time, the assailants had already escaped through a hole in the bank’s floor leading into the sewer system.
According to local news outlet Fanpage.it, the agency responsible for managing Naples’s water infrastructure has been conducting inspections of the sewer system following the robbery.
It remains uncertain whether the robbers made off with any valuables. Reports suggest that they were primarily focused on safety deposit boxes, and that no cash was present in the bank at the time of the incident.
Naples prosecutor Nicola Gratteri was on-site to oversee the situation.
A bank customer who was among those taken hostage recounted their experience to Fanpage, saying, “I was in the bank when they entered; there was definitely three of them. They came and locked us – customers, employees, and the manager – in a room. They were armed but they didn’t use violence.”
This particular branch of Crédit Agricole was not the first to be targeted; a similar robbery occurred in Milan in 2020. In that instance, two armed individuals entered through the main entrance while two accomplices crawled through the sewer network and accessed the premises via a maintenance hole. That gang successfully stole several safe-deposit boxes before escaping through the drainage system.
