The four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London on July 7 left a car packed with 16 bombs, newspapers said on Thursday, with one claiming that the devices were made by the same person who armed a second wave of attackers two weeks later.
Chilling black and white X-ray photographs of a bottle-shaped, nail-studded bomb were plastered across the front page of most dailies, offering evidence of a widespread campaign of terror.
Police at Scotland Yard, however, refused to comment on the images, which were first leaked to the ABC television network in the United States.
”How big was the terror plot?” asked the left-leaning Independent newspaper next to a large picture of the sinister weapon.
”The terrorist cell … may have been planning to throw nail bombs into a nightclub or a football crowd,” it said in a page one news story.
The bombs were found in a rental car abandoned at a railway station in Luton, north of the British capital, by the four suicide bombers, who boarded trains to King’s Cross exactly three weeks ago, newspapers reported.
Some of the homemade explosives, thought to be a mix of acetone-based chemicals, were in bottle shaped containers with dozens of nails packed around them and held in place by what looks like cling film. The nails are designed to act as shrapnel, The Guardian said. Others were flat, pancake-shaped bombs.
Summing up the fear that the bomb picture is likely to inspire, the tabloid Sun daily screamed ”Horrific.” In a front-page banner headline it said, ”Studded with nails to rip us to bits, gang had 16 of these bombs in car boot.”
The middle market Daily Mail joined in the terrifying chorus.
”Death in a bottle,” it said, running the same frightening shot.
”This nail bomb is one of 16 lethal devices left in the terrorists’ hire car.”
The Times newspaper, meanwhile, reported that the arms used by the July 7 suicide squad and the four would-be bombers who targeted three subway trains and a bus in an attempted replica attack two weeks later were made by the same person.
”Senior sources told The Times that the devices recovered at Luton are ‘strikingly similar in their configuration and contents’ to the unexploded bomb found at Warren Street Tube station on July 21,” it said.
”The nature and number of bombs points to the existence of a large and well-equipped terrorist cell intent on a sustained campaign of attacks.”
It also said the pictures of the bombs were leaked by US law enforcement agencies to ABC News, and noted that they contradicted with initial information given by Scotland Yard, who had dismissed the idea that a large horde of arms had been uncovered in the Luton hire car.
”The Times has been told that up to 16 of the devices were recovered along with nine discs of the TATP-type explosive,” the daily said. – Sapa-AFP