BIGGS OP 'RISKY'.

TRAIN robber Ronnie Biggs will not have surgery on his fractured hip and broken back because doctors say it is too risky.

Biggs, 79, injured himself falling out of his prison hospital bed. But doctors fear a general anaesthetic would kill him.

So they have given him strong pain-killers and told him to lie flat, hoping the bones will heal by themselves.

Biggs' son Michael said: "He is in absolute agony, but that's all they can do.

"I will continue to fight for his parole but if his already frail body cannot mend itself, I think he will die there in hospital."

Biggs has pneumonia and MRSA and is in isolation at Norfolk and Norwich hospital.

He cannot eat by himself, cannot walk and uses an alphabet board to talk.

Justice Secretary Jack Straw refused his parole last week, saying he was "wholly unrepentant" for his crime.

Biggs spent more than 30 years on the run after the 1963 robbery, before returning to the UK in 2001 for medical treatment.