MANILA -- At least 15 heavily armed robbers ransacked the office of a liquefied petroleum gas station in Pasay, taking away employees' valuables and the company vault -- all worth about P680,000 --- early Sunday morning, according to the city police chief.

Police believed the group was the same band of robbers behind the September heist at an electronics shop in Makati City, after an employee of the gas station identified one of the members in the LPG station robbery, explained Senior Supt. Marietto Valerio.

“The cashier identified one of the robbers when investigators showed a CCTV (closed circuit television) clip of the Makati robbery last month,” Valerio told the Philippine Daily Inquirer in a phone interview. “We believe this is the same group that robbed Wellcom.”

In September, 10 armed men swiftly rummaged the showroom of Fone Tech/ Wellcom Inc. in Barangay (Village) Isidro, Makati City. Police discovered that the robbers left empty-handed after stealing dummies of cellphones and digital cameras encased in glass displays.

According to an incident report, two Asian utility vehicles, a gray Toyota Revo and a green Mitsubishi Adventure, license plates unknown, came to the Island Gas station at 2983 Apelo Cruz St., Pasay City, about 12 a.m. Sunday.

The AUVs entered the compound after the driver of the Mitsubishi Adventure told security guard Michael Rivera to open the gates to have their tanks filled up.

After the robbers entered the compound, they disarmed the security guards and went straight to the cashier's office, the report said.

The armed men carrying M-16 and Garand rifles, and Uzi submachinc guns cracked open the station's vault using a sledgehammer and scooped out the earnings worth about P675,000, police said.

Three taxi drivers who happened to be filling up at the station were not spared by the robbers, as the armed men took their earnings and cellphones worth about P8,000.

Police said the robbery lasted about 20 minutes.