UK School Evacuated After Student Brings World War II Grenade To Assembly
The boy brought the grenade to the Osmaston CofE Primary School in Ashbourne, with the staff not expecting him to turn up with a World War II explosive device. Head teacher Jeanette Hart was unsure if the device was live, but still took it away from the child and carefully placed it behind a tree in the car park, not wanting to cause panic..
"It was quite an eventful assembly. It was going fine and there was a boy who brought an old bullet case in, which I knew about, but then his friend produced a hand grenade from his pocket," Ms Hart told BBC.
As the school was cleared and emergency services called, the children became inquisitive about what was happening.
"The children didn't really know what was going on but they knew something was different and they were excited because they saw the police and because they were playing out when they would have been in school."
Afterwards, the Derbyshire Police X-rayed the grenade and determined that the grenade was safe. The local police, meanwhile, praised the "quick-thinking" staff.
'We even got to see those (X-ray) images and were told a detailed analysis of how there was nothing that would set the grenade off," said a spokesman for the Matlock, Cromford, Wirksworth and Darley Dale Police Safer Neighbourhood Team.
As per the report, the boy had picked up the grenade, a family heirloom, without informing his parents. Ms Hart had a "little chat" with the boy after the incident, where she got to know that he brought the item innocuously.
"We'd been talking about VE Day and he knew it was from the war and just thought it was an interesting thing," said Ms Hart.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
News18
a day ago
- News18
Six Palestinians to stand trial in deadly 1982 attack on Jewish deli in Paris
Agency: PTI Paris, Jul 31 (AP) A terrorism court in France has ordered six suspected Palestinian militants to go on trial for an attack 43 years ago at a Jewish restaurant and deli in Paris that killed six people, a lawyer said Thursday. Attackers threw grenades and then sprayed machine-gun fire into the Jo Goldenberg restaurant on August 9, 1982 in the deadliest antisemitic attack in France since World War II, which also injured 22 people. Two of those killed were Americans. Though four of the suspects remain abroad and likely would be tried in absentia, investigating judges have issued an order for a trial, which could begin early next year, said David Père, who represents victims. The Paris-based court does not publish its orders publicly, and generally does not respond to journalists. The suspects are believed to have been members of the Palestinian militant Abu Nidal group at the time of the attack. The alleged ringleader, Mohamed Souhair al-Abassi, also known as Amjad Atta, is in Jordan where authorities have refused to extradite him. Three other suspects are believed to be in either the Palestinian territories or in Jordan: Mahmoud Khader Abed Adra, also called Hicham Harb; Nabil Hassan Mahmoud Othmane, also known as Ibrahim Hamza, and Nizar Tawfiq Moussa Hamada, also known as Hani. One of the defendants, Walid Abdulrahman Abu Zayed, had emigrated with his family to Norway and was extradited to France in 2020. The sixth defendant, Hazza Taha, was detained more recently in Paris. Père, who represents dozens of relatives of the victims and one direct survivor, said the trial is 'historic" for them. 'For them, this is not about the past but the present. It's a trial they intend to follow day by day," Père told The Associated Press. The one survivor represented by Père wasn't injured in the attack but remains traumatised by it. 'He wants to see the suspects and try to understand," Père said. Jo Goldenberg, the owner of the Jewish restaurant and deli, recalled the horror of the lunchtime attack during an interview in 2002. 'They fired on everyone who was eating lunch – everyone," Goldenberg said at the time. The place, which has since closed, was a centrepiece tourist attraction in the Marais neighbourhood. French authorities announced in 2015 — nearly 33 years after the attack — that international arrest warrants had been issued for the suspects. The Abu Nidal faction, named after its leader, is considered responsible for nearly two dozen attacks that left at least 275 people dead, including assaults on El Al Israel Airlines ticket counters at the Rome and Vienna airports in 1985 in which 18 people were killed. The notorious Abu Nidal himself was found dead in his Baghdad apartment in August 2002. Iraqi authorities said Abu Nidal, whose real name is Sabri al-Banna, died by suicide. (AP) GSP view comments First Published: July 31, 2025, 22:15 IST Disclaimer: Comments reflect users' views, not News18's. Please keep discussions respectful and constructive. Abusive, defamatory, or illegal comments will be removed. News18 may disable any comment at its discretion. By posting, you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy.
Time of India
a day ago
- Time of India
Sydney child abuse case: Ex-childcare worker charged for filming 'explicit' images; dark web footprint led to arrest
Artarmon man David James has been charged with filming child abuse material at multiple Sydney childcare centres, in a case that has added to growing concerns over safety in the nation's childcare sector. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now The 26-year-old Australian childcare worker is accused of filming "explicit" images and videos of 10 children, aged between five and six, during his time working at six out-of-school-hours care services between 2021 and 2024. He has been in custody since October, but his name was suppressed while the Australian Federal Police (AFP) worked to identify the alleged victims and notify their families. "It is very important for me to reassure parents and carers about this investigation. If you have not heard from the AFP, it is because we have no evidence which is linked your family to this man's offending," AFP Acting Assistant Commissioner Brett James said during a press conference on Thursday. He said the investigation began after detectives found child abuse material on the dark web, though he declined to detail the nature of the material, which ultimately led them to David. He has been charged with nine counts of aggravated use of a child to make child abuse material, one count of using a child to make abuse material, two counts of possessing abuse material, and one count of refusing officers access to his phone. He is due to appear in court again in three weeks, BBC reported. New South Wales Police confirmed in a statement that David had been employed as a probationary constable and in civilian roles from December 2021 to May 2023. However, the force said it was unaware he was also working in childcare during that time. The AFP said that he had worked at almost 60 childcare providers, but added that there was currently no evidence of offending outside the six centres already identified. Tired of too many ads? go ad free now "Any form of child sexual abuse is confronting. Even more so when the alleged perpetrator is an individual trusted with the care of our children," commissioner James said. The case has emerged amid what many are calling a reckoning in Australia's childcare sector, following a string of recent abuse scandals. Earlier this month, around 2,000 children in Victoria were urged to undergo infectious disease testing after childcare worker Joshua Dale Brown was charged with 70 offences, including child rape. In another high-profile case late last year, former childcare worker Ashley Paul Griffith, labelled "one of Australia's worst paedophiles", was sentenced to life imprisonment for sexually abusing and raping nearly 70 girls. Responding to these rising cases, the federal government is fast-tracking new legislation to introduce "tougher child safety rules", although experts argue that more comprehensive reforms, including a national register for childcare workers, are urgently needed.
Mint
a day ago
- Mint
Inside Ukraine's effort to fortify hundreds of miles of defensive lines
KRAMATORSK, Ukraine—A line of antitank ditches and barbed wire cuts through the sunflower fields all the way to the horizon here in Ukraine's battle-scarred east, fortifications the country bets it can lay fast and far enough to halt Russia's summer offensive. But the defensive gamble is facing increasingly long odds. Kyiv is in the midst of its most ambitious defensive construction effort to date, erecting obstacles and carving up the earth to thwart manned and unmanned assaults. While riflemen scan the sky for enemy robots, Ukraine's own drone operators sit below them in an extensive network of subterranean dugouts. 'The army that digs deeper is the army that survives," said Col. Oleh Rezunenko, a military engineer overseeing a nearly 200-mile section of the mammoth project. Well into its second year, the wider front-line program has been beset by delays, attacks and arrests for alleged corruption. It now faces being overrun by the enemy it is trying to repel. Rezunenko's entrenchments, including miles of waist-high concrete pyramids, start from the Kharkiv region in the north and reach as far south as Zaporizhzhia. 'Our main task is to dig as quickly and as deeply as we can." The challenge is to hold back a Russian army bolstered by thousands of fresh recruits whom Moscow is throwing into battle for only small or symbolic gains. Ukraine's understaffed units are struggling to defend against the onslaught as Russia shifts tactics daily and slowly chews through territory. Over the past 18 months, Moscow's troops have pierced several weak spots on the Ukrainian line, and taken advantage of slacker defenses in the north to begin a new push involving some 50,000 soldiers. Ukraine is now hoping that installing a triple row of fortifications will prevent similar breakthroughs in the east, where Russia is pushing to capture the key cities of Pokrovsk and Kostyantynivka. But gaps in the entrenchments have prompted some soldiers to warn that a patchy defensive belt could end up like the Maginot Line, the ambitious French fortifications that were bypassed by the Germans in World War II. Rezunenko's regiment has come under relentless Russian drone attacks, which also target their pickups and excavators. They have lost industrial equipment to strikes over the past three months and several dozen soldiers have been injured, Rezunenko says. The Wall Street Journal accompanied the regiment on a recent excursion to inspect fortifications being built in the Donetsk region, a part of the front along which Russia is actively pressing its offensive. The first line of defense is built by front-line troops, while teams like Rezunenko's dig the next line back. Regional civilian administrations are responsible for the third entrenchment, ringing key cities and reinforcing the borders of some regions. Each layer is designed to stop Russian troops in their tracks. The government says it allocated more than 46 billion hryvnia, equivalent to $1.1 billion, for defensive construction in 2024, close to 2% of Ukraine's military spending for the year. Officials say this year's amount is far greater but haven't disclosed the figure. 'We're using all the resources at our disposal," said Ivan Fedorov, the governor of the Zaporizhzhia region, where Russian artillery and glide bombs have slammed into defensive construction sites. 'We still have a lot of work to do." The speed of innovation on the battlefield means elements of the entrenchments could be obsolete by the time any Russians reach the second or third line of defense. At the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, soldiers fought in long trench lines designed to protect company-size units from artillery. Today, small explosive drones are so ubiquitous and can penetrate such small gaps in defenses that protecting soldiers from them is the priority. That means Ukraine's trenches must now be built deeper underground, with dugouts for small groups of troops and command posts for drone pilots with antidrone nets and metal grids. Battlefield features in military textbooks—observation posts overlooking miles of spacious trenches—are becoming outdated. 'Fortifications remain important, but less so than over the past two years," said Franz-Stefan Gady, a Vienna-based military analyst who recently toured parts of Ukraine's front line. Rezunenko, a 55-year-old veteran of the Soviet and Ukrainian armed forces, says the 1,000 workers he oversees build smaller trench lines than in the past but more of them, and twice as fast. A dozen of them now take just three weeks to build a section of trench equipped with foxholes and sleeping quarters for a squad of soldiers. Because Russia's armored-vehicle stocks are running low, its troops are often dispatched in small groups on motorbikes and buggies. Rezunenko's teams counter this with a dense layer of hard-to-see thin metal coils, designed to entangle advancing troops and vehicles and turn them into drone targets. Col. Oleh Rezunenko, a military engineer overseeing a nearly 200-mile section of the project, climbs up a mound of known as dragon's teeth serve as protection against tanks. Still, Ukraine's military command continues to value more traditional defenses, such as antitank ditches, because Russia deploys combined-arms warfare that draws on old and new battle techniques. 'We study what the enemy is doing, and we adapt the defenses we build," said Serhiy Aborin, the chief of staff of Rezunenko's unit, the 23rd Engineering-Positional Regiment of Ukraine's Support Forces, on a tour of positions this month. For every worker constructing defenses, Rezunenko has two others with rifles on watch for drones. 'As soon as you relax," said one worker who was toiling in 100-degree heat. 'Expect instant comeuppance." Ukraine knows all about being bogged down by enemy defenses. Its troops and their Western-supplied arms got caught in Russia's own multilayered trench lines and antitank ditches during Kyiv's major counteroffensive in the summer of 2023. The setback spurred Ukraine's current fortification effort. At the time, President Volodymyr Zelensky called for accelerated construction, and urged private companies and donors to get involved. But it wasn't sufficient to hold back Russian forces whose tanks and troops poured across a badly defended stretch of Ukraine's northern border near Kharkiv the following spring. Ukraine's antitank obstacles—often called dragon's teeth—were overturned, littering the landscape, according to images posted online by local journalists. Soldiers criticized Ukraine's military command for a lack of adequate preparation. Local authorities in Kharkiv, Ukraine's second-largest city, were left to dig trenches while gas-station owners fortified refuel pumps with sandbags. The Russians never reached the city. Earlier this month, a court arrested Kharkiv's former deputy mayor on allegations of embezzling government funds allocated for fortifications. Now, the Russians are just 12 miles from Sumy, a regional capital in northern Ukraine, and soldiers there warn of a similar lack of proper defenses. One infantryman said that when Ukraine was in Russia's Kursk region, across the border from Sumy, it should have used the time to prepare strong entrenchments at home. 'We had an opportunity to strengthen the northern part of the front," but failed to do so, he said in a phone interview. On retreat from Kursk earlier this year, the soldier said his unit found outdated trenches with no overhead cover from Russian drones. Ukraine has since taken back three villages from the Russians and is establishing stronger defensive positions near Sumy. Back in the east, Rezunenko's regiment is around two-thirds of the way to completing its line, which will be mined should the Russians come close. The colonel, whose two sons have been wounded in the fighting, says Ukraine should live by the Roman adage: If you want peace, prepare for war. 'Our regiment will continue building," even after the conflict is over, he said. 'I failed to protect my children from war. At least I'll protect my grandkids." Write to Matthew Luxmoore at
