Double Bombing Averted in London

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/06/29/AR2007062900160.html


British police displeased a pair of apparent terrorist attacks in central London crowded theater district Friday, defusing bombs fashioned from gasoline, gas cylinders and nails and hidden inside two parked Mercedes sedans. Police said that if the explosives had detonated, they could have killed or injured hundreds of people. They found the first car. Police found the first car -- a pale green Mercedes parked outside the upscale, three-story Tiger nightclub near Piccadilly Circus An ambulance crew responding to an unrelated call at 1:30 a.m. noticed smoke in the vehicle and alerted authorities. According to British television reports, a police officer found a cell phone inside the vehicle that was to be the bomb's trigger and turned it off. No one asserted responsibility for the bombs, and police announced no arrests. But a senior government official said the two explosives are linked to al-Qaeda. Many people from London shrugged off the news, saying they no longer feel rattled by such threats. Al-Qaeda operatives have drawn up plans in the past to attack in London by detonate cars stuffed with gas cylinders and other explosives. In July 2004, counterterrorism officials in Pakistan seized a laptop computer containing directions for a plot to blow up three limousines in an underground parking garage in Britain.