Four chimpanzees who escaped their enclosure are still roaming free in a Swedish zoo while three have been shot dead.

All seven of them fled out of their pen at Furuvik Zoo on Wednesday and went wandering around a building inside the park.

Staff did not have enough tranquiliser for all of them so ended up killing three and wounding one.

The hurt animal has not yet been seen by a vet because no one can get into the building safely.

It has returned to its enclosure on its own, but the other three are still on the loose.

It is not clear how the animals escaped but the fence to their pen has been broken.

Staff have tried to get the primates to return to their enclosures several times.

On Wednesday night, they found it was ‘far too risky for both the chimpanzees and for the employees’ to try and sort everything out in the dark.

They came up with a new plan for yesterday – to distract the animals so they moved to one part of the Chimpanzee House while workers restored the fence to their enclosure – but this did not work either.

‘Unfortunately, the chimps did not move where we wanted and attempts to get into the house were interrupted,’ officials said.

By this point, it was dark again and the zoo decided to wait until today to try for a third time.

The zoo said: ‘We fully understand that many of you are upset, sad and disappointed in us.

‘We take full responsibility for the situation that arose. Our responsibility as a zoo park is to maintain the safety of both people and animals in our park and something like this should not happen.

‘These are animals we know well, love and care for, therefore this situation is incredibly painful. A pain we know a lot of you share.’

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