A PEACEFUL protest threatened to get out of hand last week as villagers vented their fury over a mass burial pit.

Police had to remove a group of teenagers who had tied themselves to a wagon in a bid to stop work on the site, at the former Inkerman opencast site at Tow Law, where the Ministry of Agriculture (Maff) is to bury 120,000 carcasses.

Residents stopped vehicles going in and out of the site for two hours last Tuesday.

A police helicopter circled as crowd members sang We shall not be Moved.

Insp Ivan Wood, of Bishop Auckland police, said: "All we want to do is find a peaceful resolution to the situation."