TheByte

Rob

I hate this news because my sister lives in central London ....if anything ever happened to her I can't imagine how awfull it would be.


By Michael Holden and Luke Baker
LONDON (Reuters) - British police defused a car bomb in central London on Friday and said the device made up of petrol, gas cylinders and nails could have caused significant loss of life.

The bomb was left in a car parked outside a nightclub in the busy heart of London shortly after 1 a.m. (midnight GMT), when "hundreds" of people were in the vicinity, Peter Clarke, the head of London's anti-terrorist police, told a news conference.

"It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been significant injury or loss of life," he said.

Clarke said all lines of investigation were open, but that it was too early to speculate about who might have been responsible. Asked about possible links to a bomb found in France, Clarke said he was in contact with international partners, but gave no details.

He said he could not ignore the similarities between the latest case and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an al Qaeda militant had planned to detonate gas-fuelled bombs inside vehicles in London and other cities.
It might also have echoes of another recent plot to attack targets including a high-profile nightclub, Clarke said.

The bomb alert came almost two years after a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks on London's transport network killed 52 commuters, the first Islamist suicide bombings in western Europe. London has frequently been on edge since.

Security services were called to investigate the suspicious vehicle, a light green Mercedes, after ambulance workers, attending an unrelated incident outside the nightclub, noticed what they thought was smoke billowing inside the car.

Explosives officers discovered "significant quantities" of petrol, a number of gas cylinders and a large number of nails, Clarke said, and then manually defused the bomb.

Intelligence sources said they could not rule out a link to al Qaeda, or an Islamist-minded militant organisation.
The discovery came hours after new Prime Minister Gordon Brown named a cabinet to succeed Tony Blair's. It posed a first major challenge for Brown's three-day-old administration, and particularly his new home secretary, Jacqui Smith.

Smith chaired a meeting of the government's top emergency committee, Cobra, on Friday.


AL QAEDA LINK?
"The first duty of a government is the security of the people and as the police and security services have said on so many occasions we face a serious and continued security threat to our country," Brown told reporters.
"This incident does recall the need for us to be vigilant at all times and the public to be alert."

Security around parliament was stepped up, with police body-searching drivers of vehicles entering the compound.

At the Wimbledon tennis tournament, being played in London, a spokesman said: "We will be advising our staff to be particularly vigilant."

A security source said an al Qaeda link could not be dismissed, noting that the threat from international Islamist terrorism was the main reason the official British threat level is placed at "severe", the second highest level.
"Numerically speaking, al Qaeda is a strong possibility but it just is too early to attribute specifically," the source said, adding that it would be "wrong and short-sighted" to rule out domestic options as well.

The MI5 intelligence agency said last year it believed Islamist radicals were plotting at least 30 major terrorist attacks in Britain and it was tracking some 1,600 suspects.

A large area of central London around the scene, in the normally busy and popular theatre district, remained sealed off hours after the bomb was found. Officers said it could be several more hours before the area was cleared.
Television pictures clearly showed one gas canister after it was removed from the car. It was green and labelled "PATIO GAS", which is readily available at hardware stores nationwide.

Office workers unable to enter their buildings to start the work day milled outside, watching the police operation.
Haymarket, between Leicester Square and Piccadilly Circus, is usually thronged with Londoners and tourists, who flock there for its bars, theatres and restaurants.

Centurion

It's a bad news indeed. I'm a frequent London visitor and love the city despite the overcrowding. I've been on Picadilly square several times and might even get job around the area in central London later this year. Thank god nobody was killed.

far2000

thank god those cars were found.......

Mirage77

A W124 was involved.

Kowalski

The first car bomb found by police was a light green Mercedes W124 Saloon.

Kowalski

Apparently, there were two Mercedes W124 involved. A light green parked in front of the Tiger-Tiger nightclub in Haymarket near Picaddily Circus and a blue one parked near Park Lane. Both in Central London.

The first Mercedes was stolen in Scotland.

BMW_Dude

Sorry for going OT but for those of you who don't know, a car was driven into Glasgow airport, packed with explosives and the police say that the London and Glasgow events were linked!

Here's a link to the info:

BBC NEWS | UK | Police confident in bombers hunt

Rob

Not OT at all Will -- a suspicious package has been found in a terminal at Heathrow airport.





Edit: I just heard the package was was not anything.

NarutoRamen

This is just f__king crazy. WT-F are these people going to get from doing all this and potentially killing inoccent people? I hope these F__kers burn in hell.

Mirage77

Luckily nothing bad happened in the Concert for Diana.