Updated

At least 12 people are dead after a taxi driver in the UK went on the rampage with a shotgun then killed himself.

Divorced father-of-two Derrick Bird, 52, murdered a colleague in the middle of Whitehaven and drove through the Lake District blasting at other victims, apparently at random.

Later, following a frantic manhunt amid calls for residents to stay indoors, police found his body 20 miles away in woods near the hamlet of Boot, Cumbria.

Reports suggested there were up to 12 deaths.

Eyewitnesses told of their terror as Bird drove through Whitehaven with the shotgun hanging out of the window of his taxi.

A Whitehaven cab driver said he understood a total of three taxi drivers had been shot, two fatally.

The man, who did not want to be named, claimed an argument broke out between Bird and the other three men on Tuesday night at the Duke Street taxi rank.

He said: "All of the taxi drivers were friends. But I heard last night there was an argument on the taxi rank.

"I don't know what caused it, but something must have happened last night. Derrick Bird took off in his car and went home. I don't know what time of night it was."

The taxi driver, who had known Bird for 10 years, said he believed the gunman grew up in the Whitehaven area and had lived there all his life.