British police hunted on Saturday for the people behind failed attempts to carry out two car bombings in London’s nightclub district in what experts called Iraq-style attacks.
Security officials and ministers in the new government of Prime Minister Gordon Brown, meanwhile, prepared to hold a second meeting at 10am local time to deal with the emergency that arose early on Friday.
The finds raised the spectre of possible al-Qaeda-inspired attacks returning to the British capital, two days after Brown succeeded Tony Blair and a week before the second anniversary of the city’s July 7 2005 suicide bombings.
”The investigation is moving ahead,” Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard’s counter-terrorism unit, told reporters late on Friday after confirming that police found a second explosives-rigged car linked to the first.
He said police defused two Mercedes cars packed with fuel, gas canisters and nails after they had been parked overnight on Thursday in parts of London’s entertainment district near Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. He added that both had been ”potentially viable” in what he called a ”troubling” development.
Speaking after the first bomb was found, Clarke said: ”Even at this stage it is obvious that if this device had detonated, there could have been significant injury or loss of life.”
Police sources quoted by the Telegraph newspaper said that the first bomb, in a car parked outside a crowded nightclub with a large window overlooking the street, could have claimed more than 100 lives.
But revellers and businesses were defiant. Bars, clubs and restaurants in the area were open on Friday night, even if they were more vigilant, their representative Philip Matthews said.
Discovery
The first bomb was discovered by chance. Clarke said an ambulance crew treating a person at the Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket called in police explosives experts after noticing a metallic green Mercedes car giving off smoke just before 2am.
The second car had been illegally parked on Cockspur Street, which runs between Haymarket and Trafalgar Square, given a ticket at about 2.30am and towed an hour later to a pound in Park Lane near Hyde Park, he said.
Clarke appealed for people to contact the police if they have any information linked to the events or if they find anything suspicious.
Government sources quoted by the Independent newspaper said the bombs were to have been set off using cellphones attached to detonators.
Clarke has refused to speculate on who or what groups might have been involved or what may have motivated them. But Roy Ramm, a former Scotland Yard police commander, told BBC television that the police will benefit from a ”gold mine” of evidence left in the unexploded vehicles — such as skin and hair samples that can help identify suspects.
Detectives were scouring footage from closed-circuit television cameras in streets surrounding Haymarket, which is busy with revellers into the early hours of the morning, for images of the drivers of the two cars.
The cameras that blanket London proved a valuable tool for detectives investigating the July 7 2005 attacks on the city’s transport network, in which four suicide bombers killed themselves and 52 other people.
Aimed at government
Dame Pauline Neville-Jones, former head of the government’s joint intelligence committee, said the twin bombing plot appears ”aimed at the new government”.
In an interview with BBC television, Neville-Jones suspected ”some kind of al-Qaeda link”, while noting that it is a loose organisation that serves as inspiration to Islamist militants around the world who act on their own.
She said it was too early to determine whether the attacks were prepared by British citizens, but feared British residents may have been involved. Britain was shocked to learn that the four suicide bombers who carried out the July 7 2005 attacks were born and bred in Britain.
Intelligence analyst Paul Beaver told BBC that the car bombs bore all the ”hallmarks” of similar Islamist attacks in Iraq, southern Lebanon and elsewhere in the Middle East. The parallels, he said, were simultaneous explosions using petrol or something similar. British newspapers, meanwhile, highlighted the similarities with car bombings in Iraq, where Britain has deployed thousands of troops.
Clarke said police had no warning of an attack and it was unclear if the nightclub was the target, but there were similarities with previous plots.
Members of an Islamist-inspired gang were jailed for life earlier this year after plotting to attack a number of high-profile British targets, including London’s Ministry of Sound nightclub.
And a Muslim convert was put behind bars for 30 years here last November for plotting devastating attacks in London and New York, including a plan to detonate limousines packed with explosives at key landmarks.
A security source quoted by Britain’s Press Association news agency said it was ”entirely possible” the latest incident had overseas links as insurgents in Iraq had used similar methods, but they were keeping an open mind.
New Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who was less than 24 hours into the role, met the prime minister in Downing Street and afterwards called for public vigilance. ”We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism,” she said.
Smith earlier chaired a meeting of the government’s emergency contingencies committee, Cobra, and reported to Brown’s senior ministers at an extended Cabinet meeting. Brown’s office would not immediately confirm whether he would attend the new Cobra meeting on Saturday. — Sapa-AFP