Burglars smashed through the wall of a filling station with a sledgehammer before crawling through the hole and making of with thousands of pounds of cigarettes in a night-time raid.

Police are investigating the possibility that the raiders might have set off loud fireworks to mask the sound of the hammer at the Texaco filling station in Old Bradford Road, Cottingley.

Manager Abdullah Bham said they smashed a padlock on a shuttered door to the store room below the shop to get inside the cellar store and disable the electricity mains early yesterday.

They then ripped the burglar alarm off the wall of the station before setting off fireworks at the same time as they hit the wall with the hammer, he said.

One of the raiders is then believed to have squeezed through the hole - about two feet square - and pushed down shelves stacked full of car accessories to get into the shop. The gang searched the store room and stole £2,000 of cigarettes and tobacco and £200 in cash from behind the shop's counter.

Mohammed Hajee, who has worked at the shop for 15 years, discovered the break in when he came to open up as usual at about 6.40am.

At first he feared the burglars may still have been in the shop.

Mr Hajee said: "I looked around and thought there may be somebody in the shop. All the lights were off.

"When I opened the shutters and opened the door, I found all the tobacco had gone. I knew something was not right straight away. The shelves were all full with car accessories and were in the way of the hole."

Mr Bham said "If the police had come earlier, they may have had more chance of catching them."

He said a neighbour was woken when the fireworks went off at 2am.

West Yorkshire Police said the first call they had received was at 7am, when Mr Hajee reported the raid.

A West Yorkshire Police spokesman said: "Due to the number of calls we receive, police officers are not always able to attend incidents straight away and have to prioritise their workload. Officers immediately attend crimes that are in progress or where people's safety is at risk. However, for incidents such as this, our procedures allow us a four-hour window in which to attend.

"In this case the crime was reported to us at 7.01am and we attended at 9.58am.

"We are now investigating the incident and appealing for witnesses."

Anyone with information about the robbery should contact West Yorkshire Police on 0845 6060606.