A Royal Navy bomb squad yesterday detonated an explosive military device found on a popular Hebridean beach.
The expert team were summoned from Faslane naval base immediately the hazard was reported on Gress beach on Lewis on Sunday.
Local man Adam Wilson was out walking with his daughter Bella, 6, when he picked up the explosive device on the beach on Sunday – unaware it could be dangerous.
Mr Wilson, a nurse at Western Isles Hospital said: “I was walking along the beach and my daughter ran up to the dunes to have a look at some stuff. She ran past it and I noticed a thing like a white cylinder sticking out of the dunes.
“I pulled it out, had a look at it, and got a shock when I realised it was probably a bomb or something of that sort.
“So I laid it down carefully and called the police who came down and cordoned the area.”
He was shocked when he realised it might be live and could blow up in his hands.
Police officers guarded the area overnight and warned people to keep away for their own safety.
Ordnance experts undertook a controlled explosion of the French naval device which appears to have been thrown high up into sand dunes by recent storms.
The device is thought to be a powerful marker flare used by submarines.
The sea and air around Lewis was the location of Nato war games in October. Exercise Joint Warrior saw 16 navy units and over 40 warplanes taking part in the large-scale military exercise including air bombardment, naval gunfire and helicopter operations. A Police Scotland spokesman said that the Royal Navy bomb squad from Faslane arrived off the overnight ferry MV Hebridean Isles and carried out a controlled explosion on Monday morning.