Over the past two weeks, two bananna plantations and a gold mine near the northeastern corner of French Guiana have suffered destructive raids. Survivors estimate that they have numbered from 250 - 300 bandits, armed mainly with machetes, but with increasing numbers of small arms. They appear to be excellently informed of police and military patrols, and have excellent fieldcraft, since they have evaded military efforts to capture them, and strike even alerted facilities by suprise.
They seem to have grown from small bandit groups that operated near the Brazilian border for several years, although until recently, no target larger than isolated farmhouses have been attacked. However, they have recently demonstrated increased levels of organization, armament, and boldness.
Due to these recent bandit successes and the failure of traditional ways of combating them, authorities are being pressed for increasingly imaginative solutions.