A family, including three children, were held captive at gunpoint overnight before their father was taken to his store this morning and forced to hand over tens of thousands of pounds.

It is the second time in 11 days that a family have been held hostage in Northern Ireland while the father is taken to his workplace and forced to hand over money.

In the latest attack, the children - one aged 15 and the other two aged eight - were put in one bedroom after two assailants, one carrying a handgun, entered their house in the Lagmore area of Lisburn last night.

Their parents were held in another part of the house and at 6.45am today the father was forced to go to his work at Next in Belfast and hand over cash, totalling “less than £50,000”, to the gang.

Next holds one of the best-known post-Christmas sales of household goods and clothes, with many customers filing through its doors at this time of year.

A police spokesman said the family had been freed after their ordeal at their home. “While they were not physically harmed, they were very upset by their ordeal,” he said.

Police are appealing for information on a silver Mitsubishi Charisma car which was taken from the family’s home.

Attacks like this one - known as tiger kidnappings - have been regularly employed in Northern Ireland to target families of managers at banks and other offices with access to cash.

On December 18, a woman and her two children were held captive in a van while her husband was forced to steal tens of thousands of pounds from a Marks & Spencer store at the Sprucefield shopping complex in Lisburn.

The family’s ordeal began when a number of men called at their home in Hannahstown, outside Belfast, between 4.30am and 6.30am, forcing the woman and children into a blue Ford Transit van.

While the van was driven to the south of the city, the woman’s partner was told to drive his own car to work and take money from a safe.

He was then told to take the money to a nearby silver or grey Vauxhall Corsa car, which police said had a sticker with the Scottish flag on the back of the vehicle.

The woman and her children escaped unharmed but were badly shaken by their experience.

The most famous toger kidnapping was the £26.5 million Northern Bank robbery in Belfast city centre in December 2004, blamed on the IRA, in which two bank workers’ families were held captive.

There is no suggestion of a link with today’s incident.

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