Police have made assurances that the unexplained death of a man in an Ipswich street is not related to recent drug-related fatalities and incidents involving armed officers in the town.

Detectives are today continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of a man near a convenience store on the outskirts of the town centre.

Emergency services were called just before 5pm on Saturday to an area of St Matthew’s Street, close to the Morrisons M local store, where a man had been found lying unconscious.

Police officers and paramedics attended the scene but the man, who was in his 40s, was pronounced dead shortly afterwards.

The man’s identity is yet to be confirmed but Suffolk Constabulary is currently treating his death as unexplained.

It is understood that a postmortem examination is to take place in due course and that investigators have been preparing a full report on the incident for the county coroner.

Inspector Geoff Nunn said police are not treating the death as suspicious at this stage and have made no connection to three recent deaths linked to a rogue batch of potentially deadly ecstasy tablets.

Police are appealing for help from the public in piecing together the circumstances leading to the man being found unconscious.

Anyone with information regarding the death is asked to call 101 and quote reference number 340 of Saturday’s date, January 10.

St Matthew’s Street was the scene of another major police response last Tuesday, when armed officers were called during the early hours of the morning to reports that a group of men had been seen with a weapon.

A hand gun, believed to be gas-powered, was recovered at the scene and a 17-year-old was arrested.

A number of sudden deaths in the region over the last few weeks have been linked to the use of drugs, including the deaths of three men in Suffolk to a rogue batch of ecstasy and two men’s deaths in Norwich linked to the use of a former legal high, AMT, that was reclassified as a Class A drug. However, police stressed that the most recent fatality is not linked to either ongoing investigation.