A gang of masked robbers armed with sticks and iron bars ransacked a supermarket tobacco kiosk as staff and customers looked on in terror.
The men stormed into Newtown's Asda hypermarket late at night, threatened employees with their makeshift weapons, then vaulted over the counter to plunder hundreds of pounds worth of cigarettes and cigars. They sped off in two cars.
Asda bosses pledged a security review following the second serious crime at the store in less than a week. Only last Thursday a female robber armed with a knife threatened to stab a mother's 10 month-old son in his pram if she did not hand over her money. That happened in the car park at 9.30am. The latest incident took place at 11.15pm at the counter just inside the main entrance to the supermarket.
A silver Subaru Impreza and BMW thought to have been stolen earlier from the Blackley area of Manchester and the Trafford Centre pulled up outside the main entrance. Five or six men leapt out and charged straight for the tobacco kiosk. they were armed with a variety of blunt instruments, including a metal bar and possibly a crook lock. Threatening the female assistant at the counter they then began piling boxes full of cigarettes into bags before fleeing from the store.
Detectives have appealed for witnesses to the raid to come forward and repeated their request for help in tracking down the woman who tried to rob the mother and baby. She was white aged between 25 and 30, 5ft 3ins tall, with shoulder length brown curly hair, wearing a three-quarter length leather jacket and ski pants.
An Asda spokesman said, "we can only be pleased and relieved that our colleagues are OK."