A woman carrying a gun and dressed as Rambo sparked a terror alert at a tourist hot spot in Spain.
Petrified witnesses called police after spotting the woman in Plaza de Espana, a large square in Madrid, but when she was stopped by officers they were amazed to discover she was actually a Civil Guard on a training exercise.
A short clip shows the woman, dressed in a bandanna with a gun slung over her shoulder, acting strangely as she staggers along a pavement and falls to the ground.
Fear: This woman sparked a terror alert when she was seen staggering around Madrid carrying a weapon
While she is only visible briefly, before passing behind a set of trees, the woman resembles a reveller returning from a long night out rather than a trained officer performing an important training session.
Bizarrely she initially claimed to belong to a theatre group, before telling police she was a member of the law enforcement agency afterwards. The rifle she was carrying also turned out to be a fake.
Two colleagues dressed up as dancers. who were also taking part in the tactical exercise, were later forced to identify themselves while the officers checked their out their story.
The scare came as the Spanish government maintains the country on a level four terror alert after the deadly tube and airport attacks in Brussels.
Left-wing politician Francisco Perez Esteban branded the exercise 'reckless'.
He said: 'It's unacceptable that law enforcement agents carry out exercises of this sort in the street and cause unnecessary alarm when the Interior Ministry and the Interior Minister are sending out messages urging calm and caution among the public.
'A level four terror alert is reason enough for law enforcement agencies to refrain from these types of drills, without identification on them and with weapons which the public have no way of knowing whether they're real or fake.'
A Civil Guard spokesman confirmed the woman filmed was on a field exercise as part of a training course but said she was not told to wear the clothes she dressed up in.
He also rubbished initial reports city hall officials had not been informed in advance.
Last month a Nigerian sparked a scare in Fuencarral-El Pardo north of Madrid by walking down a street with a weapon bystanders took for a Kalashnikov slung over his shoulder.
Exercise: After questioning the woman, officers found that she was carrying out a tactical training session
Footage taken by a witness showed the officers ordering him to drop it and lie on the ground as they approached him before one kicked it away and colleagues handcuffed him.
It was subsequently discovered he was carrying an air rifle which was a replica of an M-16 used by the US military.
Local reports at the time said the man was suspected of suffering a mental illness.
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