- guardian.co.uk, Monday August 28 2000 00.49 BST
Six army bomb disposal experts worked for almost 48 hours to make safe eight sophisticated bombs, packed with brass nuts and designed to kill or maim, which had been found buried at a former police training centre.
Police refused to speculate on the identity of the terrorists, although it was thought unlikely that Irish splinter groups were responsible.
They have not ruled out a theory that the bombmakers were racists planning to target the Notting Hill carnival, which was taking place yesterday and today, nor that animal rights activists could have made the devices - though they are much more sophisticated than such groups are known to have used before.
Police are comparing the devices with another found on a stone wall at a farm 30 miles away in Gloucestershire last Sunday, and which could have been meant as a test but failed to go off.
The cache was found by a man walking his dog at Eynsham Hall, near Witney, on Friday afternoon. The animal was attracted by the smell of the explosive and pawed at loose soil beneath a tree.
Bomb experts spent Friday evening, all day Saturday and yesterday morning making the devices safe. Yesterday afternoon search teams continued to comb the area in case other devices had been hidden. The bombs were taken to a laboratory in Kent for examination.
Police were surprised by the sophistication of the devices. Constructed out of clear plastic water bottles with more than 150 brass nuts packed into the bottom, they featured anti-handling mechanisms which meant they could have exploded if touched.
It is thought that if detonated, the nuts would fly out like shrapnel, possibly as far as 500 metres. Police believe the devices had only been buried for a matter of days.
Det Supt John Donlon, of Thames Valley police, said: "It's very unusual to find devices so sophisticatedly put together, with such finesse and complication. They are expertly put together and were designed to maim or kill."
He suggested that those who made the bombs might have a military or private-sector explosives background and would have to be highly intelligent to construct the "unique" devices.
Police were not immediately certain how the bombs were to have been detonated. It was possible they had a timer, were "victim-activated" or made to explode via remote control.
Experts believe they could not have been built from amateur instructions in the manner described by David Copeland, the London nail-bomber. Nor were they the sort of devices Irish terrorists commonly use.
"We believe that they may have been created by groups with new, different methods," Mr Donlon said. "Or it may be that a new group has different members who have different methods of putting bombs together."
He added: "I would hope this find by a member of the public has thwarted a campaign and that lives have been saved. I would also hope that we have found as many as there are hidden."
Asked about the possibility of a threat to the Notting Hill carnival, Mr Donlon said: "We're looking at that very closely with the anti-terrorist branch. Because of things which have been said during the week to the promoters of the carnival, that is one thing we are looking at."
Threats have been made to people connected with the carnival but yesterday Insp Rod Childs, a liaison officer, said there were no specific intelligence reports linking the cache to Notting Hill.
