Robbers chased across three countries

Armed police in cars and helicopters are today continuing a 24-hour chase across eastern Europe, pursuing bank robbers who took two women staff hostage as they escaped with their haul yesterday.

The three raiders, described as heavily armed and dangerous, escaped by car and have driven from the robbery scene in northern Germany, through Poland to Ukraine, exchanging gunfire with police along the way.

One of the two hostages managed to escape her captors at a petrol station in Poland and is being questioned by police, who hope she may have learned something of the men's plans. The woman, 39, hid behind a petrol pump when the gang stopped for fuel, then dashed to the safety of a police car parked nearby.

The other woman, aged 25, was still with the gang when their car crashed through the border from Poland into Ukraine at lunchtime today.

It was the gang's second border break. Last night they foiled police attempts to keep them in Germany by speeding through the border crossing at Frankfurt am Oder, not far from Berlin.

The three men, thought to include at least one eastern European, targeted the bank at Wrestedt near Uelzen in Lower Saxony yesterday afternoon, seizing what was said to be a six-figure sum in euros and the two hostages.

A German police spokesman confirmed that shots had been fired at the robbers' car to try to stop them and said that at least one police car was written off in the chase, as officers tried to force the gang to a halt on a motorway.

Cross-border police efforts to trap them are being conducted with Interpol. But how a relatively standard bank robbery turned into a kidnapping - and a now 24-hour-old, several hundred mile chase - is not yet clear.