A 25-year-old man was shot in broad daylight in Warwick yesterday afternoon and Police were last night still hunting his assailants.

Gunfire rang out just before 3 p.m. near to the junction of Spice Hill Road and Khyber Heights Road.

Armed officers arrived soon after and the scene was cordoned off for two hours while a forensics team and a sniffer dog searched for evidence.

Police would give few details of what happened but residents told The Royal Gazette that the victim was believed to have been riding a motorcycle along Khyber Heights Road when he was targeted by two men travelling together on a single bike.

He suffered non life-threatening injuries and was said to have been taken to King Edward VII Memorial Hospital in a private car.

The man, from Warwick, had been working on a nearby construction site on Scott's Lane South.

A hospital spokeswoman confirmed last night that security was stepped up due to the nature of the incident.

She said: "Appropriate security measures have been taken but the hospital is not restricting access at this time."

A female resident said she arrived home just after 3 p.m. and saw neighbours pointing and staring at something on the ground.

The Police arrived soon after, she added, and sealed off the road next to her home.

The 23-year-old said she was told that a gun shell was found on the ground near to a wall outside her house.

"I was in shock for quite a while," she said. "I can't believe I see yellow tape blocking off the road. It's the last thing on my mind that I would think would happen.

"I'm just assuming that it happened right in front of the wall. That's where they found one of the gun shells, on the outer side of the wall."

She said her neighbours saw two men on a bike "that did the shooting".

"They said apparently the victim was on a bike too. I think it was a private car that brought him to the hospital."

A male resident of Khyber Heights Road said he understood the victim was Bermudian. "I heard two sounds," he said. "It sounded like: 'pop, pop'. A loud 'pop, pop'. I was inside.

"When I looked outside I didn't see nobody."

An elderly man on Spice Hill Road said he and his wife were inside their house when they heard a "bam, bam" sound.

"We heard something that sounded like gun shots," he said. "We didn't look out because construction was going on.

"We didn't dream it was gunshots, not until my wife says: 'The Police are out here'. Then we put it together."

He added: "The Police have been looking through the hedges and the grass.

"We saw them looking in the bushes and realised that some sort of shooting had taken place but the ambulance hasn't been."

A third man described hearing the shots from inside his home. "I just heard the bang. I didn't see anybody or any vehicle or nothing. I thought it was an accident or something."

Workers at a condominium building site on Scott's Lane South confirmed that one of their colleagues was the injured man but would not identify him.

Two Police officers were still guarding the entrance to the lane at 5.30 p.m. yesterday.

A Police spokesman would say only that officers responded to a report of a shooting in the Khyber Pass/Spice Hill Road area and that the victim was receiving treatment for a gunshot wound at KEMH.

He agreed that whoever was responsible was still "at large" but would not confirm whether Police were hunting more than one gunman or whether it was a "ride-by" shooting.

He said: "So far, Police inquiries appear to have been going quite well."

The spokesman asked that anyone with information call 295-0011 or the confidential Crime Stoppers hot line on 1-800-623-8477.