WASHINGTON, July 17: A Washington-area gang behind a string of bank robberies used AK-47 assault rifles that a former US soldier had smuggled from Iraq, investigators told the Washington Post.

An FBI spokesman at the Baltimore field office confirmed that the Federal Bureau of Investigation was on the case.

“We were asked to look into it even though there is no formal investigation,” he said.

The string of hold-ups in 2004 was notable for the overwhelming firepower used by the gangsters, eight of whom were later questioned, including two who became government witnesses, the Post reported Sunday.

Seldom is such firepower assembled in the United States, where guns are widely available, but where fully automatic models, which fire continuously as long as the trigger is pulled, are highly regulated.

The gang robbed six banks, and one officer, Kate Collins, chased their getaway car, armed with just a 9-mm pistol.

When her patrol car took 47 shots from the gang’s machine guns, “I felt my car shake,” she told the Post.

According to the Post, the rifles were “part of a small cache” purchased for 5,000 dollars from a gang member’s friend who had served in Iraq with a military police battalion based at Fort Meade, Maryland, near Washington. The alleged seller has not been arrested.

The gang members were tried and sentenced to prison for the robberies. —AFP