Italy: CCTV video shows 76-year-old man fighting off three armed robbers

The moment a 76-year-old man routed armed robbers from his son's store using only a large dose of courage and a wooden bar has been caught on camera.

CCTV footage posted online by the man's son, Emio Catanzaro shows the three masked men, who were wielding an assortment of gun and knives, entering a small supermarket in the southern Italian town of Latniano, near Brindisi.

Catanzaro said his father didn't think twice, despite having suffered gun wounds in another robbery at the same store 38 years ago.

As the criminal came near him, he grabbed the first thing he could find under the counter - a piece of wood - and swung it at the attackers, who then fled the store.

The elderly man can be seen chasing the frightened trio to the entrance under the eyes of a dumbfounded assistant.

"He has a bullet lodged in his back but nevertheless he was capable of so much," Catanzaro said of his father, adding that he decided to post the video online to raise public awareness about criminality in the area.

"We don't feel safe," he told Ansa news agency. "We were robbed three times in one year."