PLYMOUTH'S Royal Navy bomb disposal team were called out after a nine-year-old girl unearthed a live anti-tank grenade.

Emma Nagle was playing in the back garden of her home in Silverton, east Devon when she found a metal object and bought it into her home.

Her father, Paul Davies, 32, thought it was harmless at first but then grew suspicious and a search of the internet revealed that it was a grenade.

The specialist bomb team from the city were called in to make the area safe and set up a 330ft (100 metre) exclusion zone before disabling the grenade in a nearby field as police evacuated 12 houses.

Window cleaner Mr Davies said: "Emma was digging the vegetable patch and brought this metal object into the house. I thought it was part of a bomb that had been used for training in the war. I was not concerned. It was only after I checked on Wikipedia and realised it was a Mark III anti-tank grenade that I panicked."

Father-of-two Mr Davies is now waiting for his vegetable plot to be checked for any further devices.