The dead persons have been identified as 80-year-old Hopeton Whyte and his wife Joycelyn, 79.

Police sources from the St James division told THE STAR that the couple was at home when they were attacked and stabbed repeatedly by a group of men some time close to 7 p.m.

Residents who went to their assistance helped Whyte to the Cornwall Regional Hospital where he was later pronounced dead.

The police were subsequently alerted and upon their arrival at the couple's home his wife was found lying in a pool of *lo** in a room.

She too was pronounced dead at hospital. Efforts to contact a number of high-ranking officers from the St James division were unsuccessful up to press time last night and other sources said the police had not yet arrived at a motive for the brutal double murder.

In recent times there has been several cases of murder involving knives.

In one barbarous attack, four persons were stabbed multiple times and their throats slashed in a section of Jones Avenue, called 'Backlands', in St Catherine last Thursday.

Head of the St Catherine North police, Superintendent Assan Thompson said he believes the murders to be a spill over from an upsurge in violence in the March Pen and Corletts Road area of the parish. Rival gangs are reportedly fighting for turf.