Glass from the car was scattered over a wide area

The incident on Tuesday comes as the force's chief constable prepared to hand a dossier to the home secretary in a bid to get firework sales banned for anyone without a special licence.

Merseyside Police said the patrol car was attacked on Delamain Road, in the Tuebrook area of Liverpool, at about 1900 BST.

Chief Constable Norman Bettison believes a ban is the only way to prevent such incidents and "deprive criminals and young thugs of [fireworks] availability".

Residents in Delamain Road reported hearing a load bang and say the whole area was showered with glass. No-one was injured.

Makeshift bombs

A short time later another car was badly damaged near to Stanley Park.

One local resident described the attack on the patrol car as like a "bomb exploding".

He told BBC Radio Merseyside: "Glass showered 40 or 50 yards around my house and other houses.

"The police sealed the road off very quickly - it appeared to me the bottom of the car had been blown out and the inside of it was in a terrible state, it looked like a write off."

Mr Bettison's 50-page dossier contains evidence of all firework-related incidents over the last few weeks, which has cost the force up to �500,000 this year.

'Explosive devices'

Up to 31 telephone kiosks have been vandalised and 35 cars have been targeted, some completely destroyed.

Mr Bettison said: "My officers have seen three different types of firework misuse. The first involves children...throwing them and causing distress and alarm.

He said the second type involved vandals "putting what can only be described as explosive devices into telephone kiosks, post boxes and cars, destroying property and putting lives at risk."

The third threat, Mr Bettison said, has come from criminals using the contents of fireworks to produce low grade explosives "to cause maximum devastation".