Three armed men blasted a Standard Bank Automatic Teller Machine (ATM) at the weekend.

Although the ATM was seriously damaged during the explosion, the thugs vanished empty handed, as they could not succeed in taking the money out of the machine. It happened at Lwamondo Filling Station, west of Thohoyandou, in the early hours of Saturday morning.

When Mirror arrived at the scene on Saturday morning, scores of people had gathered around the damaged ATM as police officers and Standard Bank staff members cleared the ATM parts that had fallen apart after the damage. Security personnel were also busy loading bundles of money from the damaged ATM into their vehicle.

"We only hear about this happening in other developed areas and never thought it would happen here. This is a new kind of crime and everyone of us is shocked," said one of the bystanders.

A Standard Bank employee, Mr Mbulungeni Tshikhudo, said he received a call from his superiors telling him about the incident, on Saturday morning. "I immediately rushed to the scene and I was thinking that the thugs might have succeeded in taking the money. I was relieved when I noticed that the ATM was only damaged but that the safe that keeps the money was intact."

Supt Ailwei Mushavhanamadi of the Limpopo Police said investigations were continuing although there was no breakthrough at the time of going to press. He said police have registered a case of malicious damage to property, following the incident. "A security guard on duty heard a banging sound at about 03:00 on Saturday morning. He heard the suspects speaking in Zulu but he immediately ran to the local satellite police station to report the matter. The security guard alleges that the suspect were three in number and that they also fired some shots in the air. After the bombing, the suspects used iron bars to remove the money safe, but their attempts failed. We can confirm that they failed to take the money from the ATM. We are busy with our investigations and we request community members with information to contact us as a matter of urgency," said Mushavhanamadi.

In another incident, four armed men bombed an ATM at Bolodedu, Limpopo, and escaped with an undisclosed amount of money over the weekend.