Albanian gunmen kill local police chief

Masked gunmen have killed the local police chief of the Albanian town of Patos and wounded two other policemen.

Albanian state radio said the gunmen opened fire when police tried to stop them from robbing a bus near Patos, about one-hundred kilometres south of Tirana.

The latest incident brings to ten the number of policemen killed in clashes with armed criminals in the past three weeks.

Police have recovered only ten per-cent of the six-hundred-thousand weapons stolen from armouries during the unrest last March after the collapse of pyramid investment schemes.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service