FOUR shotguns, a rifle with a silencer and ammunition which had all been stolen were seized in police raids targeting a crime ring.

Police said they were "relieved and delighted" to retrieve the weapons in one of the biggest finds of recent years in Oxford just days after they had been stolen from a garden centre in Bampton.

The array of weapons was being stored at a house in a residential road in Headington and police fear they were set to be used by criminals.

But they admitted there were still more firearms taken in the burglary at Rupert Gooddy Plants Ltd that they were trying to hunt down.

The guns were discovered after armed police raided two homes in Benson Road and Grays Road on Tuesday, when eight men and one woman all of Eastern European extraction were arested on suspicion of a variety of offences. Police also raided a bar in the city centre.

All have been released on police bail and police spokesman Tim Wiseman said officers were investigating suspected offences involving firearms, money laundering and people trafficking.

He said: "We are not in a position to talk about the background but what we can stress is that this is an in-depth investigation into serious offences."

Mr Wiseman added: "We are not talking about card cloning but serious amounts of money.

"There may be links to people-trafficking, drugs and other crime."

One of the men arrested, a 26-year-old, had been served transportation papers to leave Britain once the police investigation was over, he added.

The guns all found at the house in Benson Road were stolen from a locked gun cabinet at the nursery in Buckland Road, Bampton, on April 4.

They were being kept there legitimately, Mr Wiseman said.

Others were taken but Mr Wiseman said: "We are not in a position to say what is outstanding."

Police did not release details of the burglary because officers believed it would compromise their efforts to retrieve them.

More than 50 officers from the tactical firearms unit, dogs teams, and the economic crime unit raided the houses in Headington and the Atlantic Bar in Park End Street at 6am on Tuesday.

The police helicopter was also used as officers executed the search warrants under the Firearms Act and the Proceeds of Crime Act. Neighbours, who did not want to be named, said they had complained about all-night parties at the Grays Road house.

A woman said: "People think it is a bunch of Eastern European guys who live there and it's their parents who own it.

"A complaint has been made to environmental health about them. They have been causing a problem for years, playing really loud music at 3am." At the house in Benson Road, one neighbour said: "I speak to the lads who live there and they seem nice."

Another said: "An English guy lived there and he sold it to a Russian lady at least five years ago." She died and left it to her son and since then there has been a drifting population of Eastern European workers living there. Very occasionally an enormous Mercedes draws up.

"There was one period of time when there were lots of parties happening at the back and slanging matches in the front then you would hear them throwing up in the hedgerows afterwards."