A gorilla has been escaped from the London Zoo enclosures and tthe police has been informed.
There were no immediate reports of injuries to the public, although visitors to the central London zoo were briefly locked down in a cafeteria and heavily armed police were summoned to help zoo workers hunt the primate.
The gorilla was apparently subdued by a tranquiliser gun and recaptured.
The zoo, inside Regent's Park in a crowded London suburb, houses at least seven gorillas in its popular Gorilla Kingdom attraction.
Witness Brad Evans told BBC Radio that he was drinking coffee in the zoo cafeteria when zoo workers told them they were locked in and couldn't leave because a gorilla had got out of its enclosure.
He said armed police quickly arrived and that customers were allowed to leave the zoo shortly later.
It wasn't yet clear if the gorilla escaped from the zoo premises into the heavily populated urban neighbourhood outside.
The London Zoo had said only that it was "managing an incident''.
In 2007, a gorilla escaped from an enclosure and ran amok at a Rotterdam zoo in the Netherlands, biting one woman and dragging her around before he was finally subdued.
The Diergaarde Blijdorp zoo was evacuated and the 11-year-old gorilla, named Bokito, was eventually contained in a restaurant within the park.
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