ARMED police were today continuing to scour the countryside in their hunt for fugitive gunman Raoul Moat.

Officers were focusing their search on wooded hills and open moorland surrounding the picturesque village of Rothbury in Northumberland.

Armed officers guarded schools with machine guns and scoured hundreds of acres of fields yesterday for the deranged gunman who has declared war on police.

The search for the Newcastle-based bouncer, suspected of blasting his ex-girlfriend Samantha Stobbart and killing her new boyfriend Chris Brown on Saturday, then badly injuring Pc David Rathband less than 24 hours later, moved away from Tyneside, after a black Lexus he had been using was spotted by the River Coquet in a small industrial complex.