Aanslagen in England #1, Autobommen.

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Laatste headlines.

Anti-terror chief: "These vehicles are clearly linked"

Two vehicles loaded with fuel and nails safely removed

Police hunt driver who abandoned explosives-packed car outside nightclub

Bomb could have resulted in serious loss of life, anti-terror chief says

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Laatste nieuws.

Police find two car bombs in central London
Bron : Reuters
Fri Jun 29, 2007 4:47PM EDT

By Peter Graff and Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Police found two car bombs packed with gasoline, propane and nails in London's teeming theater district on Friday, averting attacks that echoed an earlier al Qaeda plot and could have killed or maimed scores of people.

Officers defused the first bomb, found in a green Mercedes parked outside one of London's biggest nightclubs, the cavernous Tiger Tiger, at around 1 a.m. (8 p.m. EDT), when hundreds were packed inside for "Sugar 'n Spice Ladies Night".

The police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw smoke inside the car, defused the first bomb at the scene, saying it contained propane tanks, fuel canisters and nails.

Similar materials were later found in a blue Mercedes that had been parked illegally nearby and towed away. The two cars were "clearly linked" said Peter Clarke, London's anti-terrorism police chief.

"The discovery of what appears to be a second bomb is obviously troubling and reinforces the need for the public to be alert," he said.

Authorities said they did not know who left the bombs but they had begun a counter-terrorism investigation. The alerts came less than two years after Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 commuters on London transport.

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

He said there were similarities between Friday's incident and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an al Qaeda militant planned to detonate propane-fuelled bombs in limousines.

The ringleader of that plot, Dhiren Barot, was convicted last year. Another group of Islamic radicals were convicted this year for a plot in which a big nightclub was among the targets.


"We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism," Jacqui Smith, Brown's new interior minister, said after the meeting, which she chaired in her first day on the job.

A large area around the scene on central London's Haymarket street, near Piccadilly Square, was sealed off during the day.

Television pictures showed a gas canister after it had been removed from the car. It was green and labeled "PATIO GAS", which is readily available at hardware stores in Britain.

AL QAEDA LINK?

Explosives officers also found "significant quantities" of gasoline and a large number of nails in the cars, officials said. Sky News said the first device was rigged to detonate with a mobile-phone trigger, but police would not confirm that report.

Britain has experienced an increase in terrorism-related threats since the September 11 attacks on the United States and since it joined forces with U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 2003, an event that provoked widespread domestic criticism.

Brown has pledged to respect Britain's commitments in Iraq, although there has been speculation he may accelerate the British troop withdrawal.

Intelligence sources said they could not rule out an al Qaeda link to the car bomb, and said the danger of international Islamist terrorism was the main reason Britain's threat level is placed at "severe", the second highest rating.

"We're following up lots of leads and hopefully making some progress, but we're still keeping quite an open mind," a security source said.

"The balance of probability does lie pretty strongly with international terrorism," the official said, referring to al Qaeda-inspired radical Islamism.

Brown said the incident showed the need for vigilance.

"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," he told reporters.

Security around parliament was stepped up, with police body-searching the drivers of cars entering the compound. Across town security was tightened at the Wimbledon tennis championship.

(Additional reporting by Peter Graff, Avril Ormsby, Mark Trevelyan, Guy Dresser, Adrian Croft, Katherine Baldwin and Paul Majendie)

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London 'bomb' made safe by police
Police have made safe a explosive device in London.

Officers were called to reports of a suspicious vehicle parked in The Haymarket shortly before 0200 BST.

The immediate area was cordoned off while police examined what they described as a "potentially viable explosive device".

The Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command has launched an investigation and The Haymarket is likely to remain closed for some time.

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Op vrijdag 29 juni 2007 10:28 schreef buachaille het volgende:
Volgens de BBC: "All options, including the Irish, are open at this stage," said the source." Lijkt me niet dat de IRA (of een andere Ierse beweging) hiervoor de tijd geschikt acht. Ik denk dat het hier een amateur aanslagpoging betreft van iemand die wat recepten voor het maken van een bom van internet heeft geplukt.