JUST Stop Oil activists launched a series of co-ordinated actions against buildings used by MI5, the Home Office, the Bank of England and Ruper Murdoch’s News Corp today.

The climate activist group said it targeted the buildings across central London because they “represent the pillars that support and maintain the power of the fossil fuel economy.”

Activists sprayed orange paint using fire extinguishers, a common protest tactic used by the group in recent weeks.

The Metropolitan Police said “a number of people” had been arrested following the actions. City of London Police said two people were arrested outside the Bank of England. 

A spokesperson from Just Stop Oil said: “We are not prepared to stand by and watch while everything we love is destroyed, while vulnerable people go hungry and fossil fuel companies and the rich profit from our misery.

“The era of fossil fuels should be long gone, but the creeping tentacles of fossil fuel interests continue to corrupt our politics, government and the media — as they have for decades.

“How else do you explain a government ignoring sensible no-brainer policies like renewables, insulation and public transport, which would cut our energy bills and our carbon emissions, in favour of corrupt schemes to drill for un-economic oil and gas at taxpayers’ expense?”

The protests this morning follow more than three weeks of actions by Just Stop Oil activists launched on October 1 to pressure the government to halt all new gas and oil projects. 

On Sunday, the police urged members of the public not to directly intervene with the protests, after angry drivers removed protesters who were blocking roads in central London.