Fire alert clears shopping centre

Shoppers were allowed back in after half an hour

A giant regional shopping centre near Bristol was evacuated on Sunday because of a fire alert in one of the stores.

Hundreds of shoppers and staff were asked to leave the main section of The Mall at Cribbs Causeway after a light burnt out in its branch of Superdrug.

People waited in the car parks or went into the John Lewis department store or Marks and Spencer, which remained open as they were isolated by shutters.

The Mall reopened 30 minutes later after the all-clear from firefighters.

Sarah King, spokeswoman for The Mall told BBC News Online: "A Tannoy announcement was made that we needed to evacuate.

"It was a precautionary measure for safety reasons so that the public would be out of the way until the problem was sorted out."

The evacuation was just after 1100 BST, soon after The Mall opened for business for the day.