An 18-month-old baby girl has become the latest innocent victim of gun crime after she was shot and injured in Hackney, East London yesterday.

The girl was in a car with her 30-year-old father and his 35-year-old friend, yards from their home, when a gunman ran up and unleashed a hail of bullets through the window.

The baby was hit in the leg and her father and his friend were also injured. A four-year-old boy was also in the car but escaped unscathed. The girl is being treated in hospital where doctors described her condition as "stable".

Detectives are investigating the possibility that the victims knew the gunman and that the shooting resulted from a personal feud rather than being drug-related.

The car was parked in Blurton Road when the gunman and two other men approached it from Chatsworth Road. The armed man fired at least 15 bullets with a handgun before he and his two accomplices escaped on foot. The baby's mother was in a nearby house on Chatsworth Road when the shooting happened.

The area around the shooting scene is now sealed off and is being combed for clues by police forensic teams.

Niall Crowley, 39, who owns the Eclipse Bar on the corner of Blurton Road, said he was alerted to the shooting by a customer who ran into his bar. He said: "Some customer came in and said 'There is a riot going on'.

"It shocked me as this area used to have a reputation for this kind of thing, but nothing has happened in the last three years, since I have owned this place."

Jermaine Venture, 21, who was outside his house on Blurton Road when the shooting occured, said: "I was standing there and I heard gunshots. I thought it was fireworks, then I heard it again and I thought 'oh s***, what's going on here?'"

Officers from Operation Trident, which investigates black-on-black gun crime, have been drafted in to lead the hunt for the gunman.

The attack follows a series of other high-profile gun crimes including the death of 14-year-old schoolgirl Danielle Beccan who was gunned down in a drive-by-shooting in Nottingham as she walked back from a funfair with friends.

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