Gunmen attack boxing fans at Dublin hotel, killing 1

Former Southland-trained boxer Jamie Kavanagh escaped safely Friday when gunmen fired assault weapons at a weigh-in in Dublin, Ireland, killing one person, before the lightweight’s planned Saturday bout.

Police are hunting a group of men disguised as police officers and one dressed as a woman after a horrifying shooting at a boxing weigh-in today.

And gardaí said there may have been more than two people shot and injured in the attack who fled the hotel amid the pand-emonium that broke out after the shooting. PA A Garda cordon outside the Regency Hotel in Dublin after one man died and two others were injured following a shooting incident at the hotel.

Witnesses told the Irish Independent that three men, dressed in “police-style” uniforms, burst into the foyer of the hotel about a half hour into the event.

Fire, police and ambulance vehicles in the scene of the shooting at the Regency in Dublin.

One was declared dead at the scene, while two others were hospitalised with serious gunshot wounds.

The scene has been sealed off.

“When I came out I saw there was a Garda tent around the man who had been shot and he was now dead”.

“At that point the gunman leaned over the receptionist’s desk and looked down and pointed the gun at me”.

Mel Christle, president of the Boxing Union of Ireland, said the last of the boxers weighing in had just stood down when he heard gunfire erupting outside the room.

“It is so surreal, it only occurred so fast, right before me”.

“It’s believed to be linked to a gangland feud and the murder of 34-year-old Gary Hutch in Spain in September.”

Box Nation – the TV channel due to broadcast the fight – tweeted that it would be cancelling the match.

Kevin McAnena, a BBC radio reporter who at the hotel in north Dublin, told the broadcaster he “heard two loud gunshots from outside coming into the hotel”.