I feel deep, deep sadness and immeasurable sorrow

Glyn Powell, FUW

The policeman was crushed when a digger collided with a police car which then collided into a police van just after 0100BST on Sunday.

Another officer who escaped the van and colleagues who witnessed the incident were deeply shaken, added police.

The officer was being comforted by relatives at Neville Hall Hospital in Abergavenny.

'Not a protester'

Protesters said the driver had not been one of them.

Glyn Powell, deputy president of the Farmers' Union of Wales, said nobody knew why or how the incident happened.

"I feel deep, deep sadness and immeasurable sorrow," he said.

The protest has now ended.

Protester Robert Davies told BBC Radio 5Live's Up all night programme that people's thoughts were with the officer's family.

He said people had wanted to keep any threat of foot-and-mouth disease from their region.

Farmers whose sheep graze on the land were worried that the carcasses would contaminate the streams.

Out of 852 foot-and-mouth cases across the UK, there are already 47 cases in Wales - 29 in Powys, five in Monmouthshire and 13 on Anglesey.