Residents in a Queensland town have been asked to shelter inside their homes as officers hunt for a potentially armed assailant.

Police made an emergency declaration at 10pm on Monday after reports of an armed person in the town of Warwick, southwest of Brisbane.

People were asked to stay clear of an area bounded by Wood, Gore, Grafton and Dragon streets.

Anyone living within the exclusion zone was urged to stay inside their properties.

The emergency declaration was Queensland’s second in two days after a near 10-hour siege in Townsville that ended on Monday morning.

A 50-year-old man was found dead in a Kirwan home after firing several shots that hit nearby houses and the vehicles of responding officers.

By Peter Bodkin in Sydney