Highway Bandits, An Ever Increasing Trend In European Armed Robbery
On the SS613 between Lecce and Brindisi, 9 February 2026, an armored car met a coordinated stop on a busy stretch of highway.
Traffic stalled, an explosion was used and a small gunfight ensued all caught by passing motorists.
The Attack
Shortly after dawn on the SS613 near Tuturano, a group of at least six masked assailants, some presenting as police with removable lights, forced a cash van to stop by cross-parking vehicles and setting them alight, creating a wall of flame that trapped traffic in both directions.
They used an explosive charge to blow open the rear of the armored vehicle, producing a large vertical blast captured by motorists. Carabinieri units responded and exchanged fire with the attackers.
A patrol vehicle was struck by rounds, and a pursuing police car was rammed during the chaotic retreat. Authorities later detained two suspects believed to be part of the crew.
Despite the breach, no money was taken, and no civilian or guard fatalities were reported. According to The Times, the cash compartment’s remote foam system activated after the door was blown, denying access to the notes.
The Actors
The target was an armored van reportedly operated for the Battistolli group, moving funds along the Lecce–Brindisi corridor in the Puglia.
The responding force was the Carabinieri, whose provincial command coordinated the interdiction and subsequent search. Two suspects, identified by local outlets as residents of the Foggia area, were arrested within hours during rural pursuit, and additional participants remain sought.
Coverage by Italian regional media and national outlets consistently describes the crew as equipped with long guns, prepared incendiaries, tire spikes and a vehicle arson plan to delay pursuit.
How The Money Survived, Defense In Depth In Practice
The decisive control is a secondary, internal denial layer, a rapidly expanding, hardening foam filling the value compartment and encapsulating note cassettes. Italian press reporting attributes the save to a “Spumablock” system, a commercial solution that mixes two agents to create a rigid polyurethane mass on trigger, typically via sensor trip or remote activation by the crew or control center.
Manufacturer literature states the device rapidly floods the value bay, solidifies immediately, and allows full recovery of undamaged banknotes once released, and under Italian Interior Ministry rules vehicles equipped with such systems can carry higher limits due to the additional denial control. In the words of one report, according to The Times, “the system’s Spumablock came into action,” after the blast, which ended the theft phase.
For physical security teams, this is textbook defense in depth. The outer layers failed in sequence under deliberate, violent attack, the road environment was successfully engineered by the crew to isolate the target, and the armor was breached. The inner denial layer, independent of door integrity, removed time value from the adversary by transforming accessible cash into an immovable, unified block.
Similar Crimes On Italian Highways And Across Europe
Italy, highways, cash vans, and explosives is a known pattern. Recent incidents underline the tempo and the tactics:
A14, Ortona, 5 January 2026, attackers used spikes, smoke and an explosive device, reported loss around €400,000, with fires used to block lanes.
A14, Cerignola sector, 7 January 2026, armed assault against a Battistolli convoy was reported by national outlets within the same week, indicating concentration of risk along Adriatic corridors.
A14, Porto Recanati, 27 October 2025, coordinated attack against two Mondialpol vehicles using explosives, semiautomatics and nails on the roadway.
Scilla area, Calabria, 1 December 2025, armed group of approximately ten attacked an armored van on the motorway and escaped with roughly €2 million, according to regional reporting.
Italian labor and business monitoring outlets have flagged the cluster, citing a heavy 2025 and an early 2026 with multiple highway assaults in quick succession.
Beyond Italy, cash-in-transit robberies with highway interdiction and explosives remain an intermittent threat vector in greater Europe, with cross-border police noting organized networks capable of paramilitary-style robberies and rapid egress, and EU policing reports emphasizing the need for multi-state coordination given mobile crews.
While specific modus operandi vary, the combination of lane denial, vehicle arson, long guns and demolition is recurrent in several states, which argues for harmonized denial tech and drills across the region.
Conclusion
The SS613 attack demonstrates the modern physics of cash protection in motion. The adversary engineered the road, forced the stop, defeated the door, and still lost the prize.
The layer that mattered was not thicker steel, it was an independent, immediate denial mechanism that turned free cash into an inert block under blast, flame and gunfire.
For operators and insurers, that is the definition of resilience, a defense in depth stack that accepts perimeter failure and still guarantees zero loss. Build around that principle, drill the activations, and keep the convoy tactics focused on time denial and crew survival once the foam is live.
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