THE News of the World was sacrificed yesterday after a series of increasingly damaging allegations left its reputation in tatters.

And last night it was being reported its former editor, Andy Coulson, will be arrested this morning as the police investigation into phone hacking steps up a gear.

In a move that sent shockwaves through the industry, James Murdoch, chairman of publisher News International, said the 168-year history of Britain’s best-selling newspaper would end on Sunday.

That announcement, which led to sub-editors at The Sun, the sister paper of the News of the World (NoW), walking out in protest last night, came as advertisers deserted the News of the World in droves and police revealed 4,000 people may have had their phones hacked.

Mr Murdoch, son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch, pulled the plug after claims it paid private investigators to illegally intercept the voicemail messages of murdered Milly Dowler, bereaved military families and relatives of 7/7 bombing victims.

It also stands accused of illegally paying thousands of pounds to police officers.

Yesterday, the widow of one North soldier welcomed the news the paper was to close.

Karen Upton, from Catterick Garrison, North Yorkshire, lost her husband, Sean, in July 2009 when he was killed by a Taliban bomb.

“I think what has happened is disgusting. Families who have lost loved ones do not need any more heartache or devastation piled on top of what they have already been through,” she said.

News of the World journalists, however, reacted furiously, demanding to know why they were losing their jobs when News International chief executive Rebekah Brooks, editor when the hacking occurred, had kept hers.

Current editor Colin Myler said: “This is the saddest day of my professional career.”

The paper’s associate editor, David Wooding, said: “When I went up into the editorial floor, everybody was standing around looking dazed as if a nuclear bomb had just hit. We had been saying all week ‘how can it get any worse?”’ However, James Murdoch said the good things the paper had done had been “sullied by behaviour that was wrong”.

“Indeed, if recent allegations are true, it was inhuman and has no place in our company,”

he said.

This weekend’s edition will have no advertisements and all the revenue from sales will go to good causes.