The year's most explosive week
Animal rights activists targeted a meat factory in Oxford with firebombs on Sunday at an estimated cost of £80,000.
Fire crews, police and detectives were called to Mutchmeats on the Witney Industrial Estate after a blaze broke out in one of the lorries in the parking bay. A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said: "A number of incendiary devices had been planted underneath the lorries parked in a compound. One detonated, setting a lorry on fire."
The Animal Liberation Front (ALF) claimed responsibility for the arson attack. A spokesman for the ALF claimed "the meat industry is the largest area of animal abuse there is and that is why it is regularly targeted." The militant organisation has in the past attacked meat and dairy producing companies and their distributors with similar firebombs placed under lorries. It was the second attack by the ALF in as many hours, having just claimed responsibility for an attack on a rabbit centre, allegedly supplying rabbits for vivisection.
These are not the first instances of ALF 'hits' in Oxfordshire. A total of £1 million worth of damage was caused when 19 lorries were set on fire at the Unigate Dairies in Oxford, last August.
There are many items that the amateur fisherman expects to pull from the waters: a scruffy boot, a rusty tin can or even an old car tyre. However, discovering an unexploded World War II bomb must come as something of a surprise.
When boat repairer John Parkinson attempted to retrieve a spanner dropped overboard into the Oxford Canal, a spot of makeshift angling could have created an explosive situation. By using a magnet on a length of string, he hoped to snag the erstwhile tool. Instead of locating the spanner, Parkinson "landed" an eleven-pound World War II device.
"I knew it was a bomb as soon as I got it to the surface" explained Parkinson. Originally, he decided to put the bomb in the College Cruisers yard, which could have caused further problems due to the proximity of several gas cylinders and the Jericho residential area. Parkinson "worried about what the magnet might have done to the bomb", and felt it was sensible to move it just in case it had been re-activated.
A spokesperson for Thames Valley Police said army bomb disposal experts were called to the College Cruisers yard to confirm that it was a bomb after "initial doubt" over whether "it was a bomb or a lead weight." The spokesperson added that the 18-inch-wide by six-foot-long bomb was taken to Port Meadow "where it was disposed of in a controlled explosion."
Parkinson's manager Charlie Burns congratulated the Army and the Police for their handling of the situation. He said that they "put us very much at ease and dealt with the situation very calmly."
18th May 2000