Two shot dead in Welsh village

PETER VICTOR

Police are investigating a shooing yesterday in which two men were killed and two others injured at a rural Welsh village.

Detectives are this morning waiting to question a 58-year-old man in hospital after the series of shootings in the normally quiet hillside village of Cilfynydd, Mid-Glamorgan.

Police said it was too early to say what sparked the incident but they are investigating a theory that it may have resulted from a feud that blew up over a dog which had been chasing sheep.

"This will take a long time to unravel," said Detective Superintendent Colin Jones. "It may be [24 hours] before we are able to work out exactly what happened."

Armed police arrived at the scene of the shootings shortly after 10am yesterday morning to discover a 55-year-old local man lying dead in the driveway of a house. Police had not identified the man by late last night as they had not traced his relatives.

Another man, 59-year-old Geraint Jones, from Cilfynydd, was found lying in farm buildings a short distance away. He was taken to East Glamorgan Hospital but died later after surgery to gunshot wounds in the stomach.

Lewis Lloyd, Mr Jones's 79-year-old uncle, was shot in the chest and upper arms but was in a comfortable condition at the hospital last night.

A local villager, who asked not to be named, told how he heard five gunshots a number of minutes apart but did not react because "I thought it was a local farmer out shooting rabbits".

A 58 year old man, also local, was arrested and was under police guard last night at the hospital.

His injuries were not life threatening, a police spokesman said, and his condition was described as "stable".