FRENCH police say a teenager has confessed to the murder of a former Ebbw Vale miner.

Arron Powell, (pictured) 56, who lived in Grangetown, Cardiff, but came from the Ebbw Vale area, died last Wednesday from a stab wound to his heart in the town of Orleans, south of Paris.

A 19-year-old man from the Orleans area gave himself up to police on Monday. The director of the Service Rgional de Police Judiciaire, the regional police service in Orleans, told the Argus today: "He will go before a magistrate today, but he has already admitted his involvement and we have a number of pieces of evidence linking him to the crime. We are 100 per cent certain it was him, and that he alone administered the blow. For us, the affair is resolved."

The director added that the investigation would continue to identify witnesses and that there was still "some work to do" to prepare the case.

Mr Powell had been travelling with family friend Claire Alderman, 29, to get over the loss of his 20-year-old daughter, Mandy Powell, who was killed in a hit-and-run car accident in December 2000.

They were at Orleans railway station on their way to Barcelona when Mr Powell, who for a number of years kept the Victoria Arms pub in Cwm, went in search of food. There was an altercation, and rugby fan Mr Powell was found stabbed on a staircase. French police said yesterday that a 19-year-old local man had turned himself in and is being questioned.

A Foreign Office spokesman said the police in France had 48 hours in which to lay charges.

Close friend and landlord of The Lord Windsor pub in Grangetown, Eric Harmer, said: "Knowing from what has happened with Mandy in the past, they are not a family who take comfort from somebody being arrested.

"If his wife, Maria, could find how it all happened then that may give her some crumbs of comfort because she can't understand why it happened."

It is unlikely that the funeral of Mr Powell will take place within the next fortnight because of the need to perform a second post-mortem examination when his body is brought back to Wales.