A large area of central London around the busy theatre district where police defused a car bomb packed with petrol, gas and nails remains sealed off hours after the bomb was found. Police also sealed off two more central London streets -- Park Lane and Fleet Street -- on Friday (June 29), as they investigated other suspicious vehicles after defused a car bomb in London's busy theatre district. The bomb was found in a green Mercedes parked outside a night club shortly after 1 a.m. (midnight GMT), when hundreds of people were packed in the busy night-life district a half-a-mile (one km) from the prime minister's Downing Street residence. The police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw smoke inside the car, defused the bomb, which Sky News said was rigged to detonate with a mobile-phone-triggered device. Authorities said they did not know who left the bomb but they had begun a counter-terrorism investigation. 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. Kirsten Parker, Security Analyst at Exclusive Analysis, said the perpetrators were likely to be home-grown. "We believe it would have been along the same profile of past plots in the UK -- people like Dhiren Barot, people like Sidique Khan; local individuals who are disaffected and then basically tried to copy types o...
Rating: (0 ratings) |
Views: 8 |
Added: Jul 11, 2008 |
| Category: |
|
|
| Copyright: GRAPHIC / REUTERS |