TERRIFIED shoppers and supermarket staff were ordered to lie on the floor when armed robbers burst into a Kwik Save supermarket.
Three or four men wearing dark clothing, hooded jackets, balaclavas with eye holes and gloves brandishing a double barrelled sawn-off shotgun, a handgun and an axe ordered the 15 staff and several customers to comply and lie on the floor at 6pm on Saturday.
They then kicked open the cash office door removed the staff and stole the contents of the safe and two tills before leaving the Burnley store in a stolen Honda Accord Aerodeck.
The guns were not fired but two middle-aged women, a shopper and a member of staff, were taken to Burnley General Hospital suffering from shock.
Police said the green Honda, registration number P841HKD, has been stolen on December 12 from Worsley, Manchester, and has yet to be found.
It was driven off in the direction of Rossendale and police are liaising with Greater Manchester Police about similarities with armed robberies in that area.
Det Con Steve Eccles said: "We want to appeal to anyone who saw this vehicle outside the store and might have seen the robbers without their masks.
"There are other shops in the area and people would have been about and it is possible the vehicle was outside the shop for a while.
"We have still to find the vehicle, which left the scene by going up Cog Lane and we have no more reported sightings of it so I am appealing to people in the Manchester Road or Rossendale Road area just after 6pm to contract the police if they saw this vehicle."
The store's area manager was in the shop yesterday and it was open as normal but he refused to comment. A security guard was patrolling the foyer area.
Pete Williams, a spokesman for Kwik Save, said: "We closed the store after the incident because a number of our staff were shocked. We would normally have been open to 8pm.
"It was fairly quiet when the robbers entered the store and they stole not a substantial amount of money.
"They did seem to make a bee-line for the cash office when they entered the shop and we are reviewing our security arrangements at the store."
Police have asked anyone who witnessed the incident or saw the vehicle to contact 01282 425001.
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