Seven phone boxes down and hundreds more to go at! ('Phone box blasts tally rises to seven', October 16).

Apart from the destruction of the phone boxes, I am amazed that an innocent person hasn't yet been killed or badly hurt. What is to say that we aren't going to read about the death of a youth in a phone box still attached to the firework he or she had just lit?

No responsible shopkeeper would sell fireworks of this kind to a minor and, bearing in mind the size and price these mini-bombs must cost, where are they coming from?

If reports are true that these fireworks are "display" ones, then how are they getting into kids' hands ?

The simple solution is ban fireworks and bring back organised, displays. What is cost compared with the price of a life?

PR Willey,

Burnholme Drive,

Heworth, York.

...THE idiots who blow phone boxes up should be charged under the Terrorism Act. OK, they don't make demands for political or social gain, but their actions fit every other criteria of the Act.

What difference is there when someone is injured or maimed by flying debris caused by one of these explosions, as they will be soon, and people being mangled by an IRA or animals rights activist bomb exploded in a litter bin?

These are not acts of youthful high jinks and the explosives are not the "penny banger" of my youth. They are acts of terrorism with legally bought explosives.

W Elliott,

Kinbrace Road,

Hartlepool.

Updated: 11:22 Saturday, October 18, 2003