Brazil gang robs, blows up police station

RIO DE JANEIRO (Reuters) - A group of men used dynamite to blow up a police station in a town in Brazil's Sao Paulo state on Monday, after seizing machine guns and a large cache of confiscated drugs from the building.

Globo TV network showed images of the wrecked building with its roof blown off and patrol cars nearby covered in rubble after the attack, which took place in Botucatu around 150 miles west of Sao Paulo city at about 5 a.m.

"I opened my window and saw a fire, the wall falling down, there was a lot of noise from things falling, one explosion after another," Neide Albertini, a cook who lives next door to the station, told Globo.

Witnesses said the men arrived at the station in a small truck and broke down the station's front door.

They took pistols, machine guns, bullet-proof vests, 220 pounds (100 kg) of marijuana and 50 pounds (23 kg) of cocaine paste and cocaine and then set fire to all the files in the building, police said.

"It was a very audacious act," said police chief Carlos Antonio Juliao Filho. "The station was completely destroyed."

Violence by organized crime groups funded by illegal drugs is a major problem in Brazil. A wave of attacks by a prison gang against police in the financial capital Sao Paulo shocked the country in 2006, but there has been no repeat of such large-scale organized violence.

(Reporting by Stuart Grudgings; Editing by Cynthia Osterman)