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.

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.

Gardaí suspect he had been in a row with the gunman in the days before the shooting.

Fears are growing among local residents after a suspected dissident republican was murdered in his pub in the first of two gun killings in Dublin within hours of each other last night.

A teenager is recovering after a number of his fingers were hacked off in a brutal knife attack.