A SUB-POSTMASTER said today he was too traumatised to continue after a terrifying attempted break-in at his home was linked with a chainsaw robbery at a nearby post office.

David Sell, who has resigned from Hovingham Post Office in Ryedale - where he was robbed by raiders armed with knives in 2000 - compared the trauma of the attack with his mother's death.

"It was my dream of running a post office and stores in this lovely village among fantastic people," he said.

"But I am responsible for my staff, and to see their faces when we heard about Helmsley, and the trauma we actually went through before, it's on a par with the death of my mother. You have to put it up there."

But Brian Fletcher, of Walmgate Post Office, York, who has twice been raided in the past, said today he had not been deterred from continuing in the job.

"It might sound blas, but if you think of all the nasty things that could happen, you would never do anything," he said.

"My reaction was 'they are blooming pests,' but somebody must have been desperate to go to that extreme."

In the incident at Mr Sell's home earlier this week, intruders smashed a bathroom window before running off when the alarm went off. Mr Sell said he subsequently rang Geoff Simpson, the postmaster at Helmsley, to tell him what had happened, and warned him to be on his guard.

Just over an hour later, raiders used a chainsaw to break into Helmsley Post Office and beat up Mr Simpson. Police said today there was evidence linking the two incidents, and they also believed there were strong links with a break-in at Nawton and Beadlam Post Office, near Helmsley, last December.

During both the Helmsley raid and the Nawton break-in, pieces of wood, apparently from a gate, were found on the premises.

Mr Sell, visibly shaken by his ordeal this week, said he is terrified of what might have happened when the intruders called this week.

"Perhaps they were thinking their next move would have been to confront us in the bedroom, get me to de-activate the alarm system and then provide them with the keys to the safe," he said.

He feared the gang's next move would be to target premises during the day, when it could be that certain safes would be accessible.

He said he was not prepared to risk the lives of his staff and had resigned with immediate effect.

"My main concern at this point is to apologise to the village and the surrounding community for the inconvenience of closing the post office - we want to stress that the shop is and does remain open," he said.

"Five years ago I would never have believed this was possible."

A spokesman for Post Office Limited said: "There are mechanisms in place to issue warnings to sub postmasters, but the problem is how big an area do you cover with such a warning?"

He also played down the significance of the Hovingham incident. "We do need to get this into perspective," he said.

"The incident at Hovingham was an attempted break-in at the sub postmaster's home, not the post office branch."

Updated: 11:54 Friday, January 17, 2003