This is the moment a 95-year-old woman bravely jumps on the back of a thief who had just grabbed her 80-year-old friend’s necklace.

A terrifying robbery was caught on camera inside a block of flats in Bilbao, in northern Spain.

Footage captured a young man opening a lift door and politely letting the two elderly women, named Elvira, 95, and Tina, 80, go in before him.

Elvira walks in first but as Tina walks past him he grabs her necklace from her throat and goes to dash out of the building.

But as the robber turns back after ripping the necklace from Tina’s, it snaps and the precious stones fall to the floor.

Despite her age, Elvira jumps into action and launches herself onto the man’s back as he bends over to pick up the scattered stones.

The robber shrugs her off and she falls to the floor. He then runs out of the door of the building and pushes Tina to the ground as he does so.

Fortunately neither of the women were badly hurt and did not need to see a doctor,  suffering only scratches.

But Elvira said she had feared the worst. She said: ‘I saw myself in a wheelchair

‘I thought that, from here, I will not get up, tomorrow we two will be in a wheelchair.’

The 95-year-old added that she has not noticed anything suspicious at first when the man politely let them go into the lift before them.

She said: ‘As he was first, I let him be first, but he insisted in letting us go inside first.’

Tina said she had felt more ‘shaken’ after seeing the video and revealed that she now felt scared at home for the first time and kept checking all of her rooms.

Police released the CCTV footage in the hope of identifying the robber who is still at large. The investigation continues.