Three elderly siblings were left battered and “covered in blood” after two armed and masked men burst into their isolated farmhouse and robbed them, Limerick Circuit Court heard today.

A mother who had been recovering from breast cancer yesterday relived, along with her husband and their four young children, a night of terror when an armed gang burst into their rural home in Co Limerick.

Former associates will link three men, two from Dublin, to aggravated burglaries in Co Limerick during which neighbouring families were allegedly overpowered by an armed gang, a jury heard yesterday.

Three men appeared yesterday at Kilmallock District Court charged in relation to armed raids and the false imprisonment of residents at three homes in Co Limerick almost four years ago.