A PARANOID schizophrenic yesterday admitted sending letter bombs to firms across the region because he thought they had links with animal cruelty.

Glynn Harding sent a series of home-made explosive devices to addresses across the North, injuring several people in a reign of terror which lasted more than two months.

Harding targeted farms and other traders with links to the animal industry, including a pet store and a cancer research charity shop which sold fur coats.

He used his home in Crewe, Cheshire, to make the devices by fitting a battery-powered detonator to Jiffy bags filled with gunpowder and crude shrapnel, such as ball bearings and pins.

His campaign began just before Christmas when a bomb was sent through the post and opened by a woman receptionist at an animal tag firm in Masham, North Yorkshire.

A farmer in Ripon also suffered facial injuries and needed hospital treatment after receiving a device in the mail.

Other targets included an agricultural firm in Thirsk, a family-run pet store on the outskirts of Newcastle and a British Heart Foundation charity shop in Penrith, Cumbria, although not all the bombs exploded.

Harding's campaign stre-tched across England, Scotland and Wales. At an estate agents in Patrington, East Yorkshire, a woman employee almost lost her sight after an explosion.

Another device, sent to a pest controller, in Congleton, Cheshire, blasted a six-year-old girl with shards of metal.

As Harding's campaign gathered momentum, his targets became increasingly obscure and chip shop worker Jonathan Davies in Holywell, North Wales, had a narrow escape when he opened one of the bombs.

His father, Robert, said: "It was full of nails and it sounded like a shotgun going off. Luckily he opened it away from himself. He is very lucky to be alive."

The terror campaign was first thought to be the work of animal rights extremists, but the Animal Liberation Front consistently denied any involvement in the bombings.

Harding, 27, originally from Crewe, but now living in a secure mental home, was arrested after a joint operation between five police forces and led by North Yorkshire Police.

He pleaded guilty at Chester Crown Court to 12 counts of sending explosive devices, three counts of causing bodily harm and one count of possessing gunpowder.

He will be sentenced on September 21.