06/30/2007
British police launched a widescale manhunt and scoured CCTV footage on Saturday after foiling a possible al Qaeda plot to detonate two car bombs packed with fuel and nails in the heart of London.
Squads of extra police were deployed on the streets of the capital, particularly around landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament, but tourists and Londoners appeared largely unperturbed, going about their business as usual.
An intensive counter-terrorism investigation was launched after the discovery in the early hours of Friday of a metallic green Mercedes packed with up to 60 litres of fuel, several gas canisters and a large quantity of nails.
The vehicle was parked outside the Tiger Tiger night club in the teeming theatreland district of London, and aroused suspicion only after ambulance workers, treating someone else, thought they noticed smoke inside the vehicle.
A mobile phone, which security experts believed might have been a detonation device, was left inside the fume-filled car.
A second Mercedes packed with gas and nails was later found to have been parked just a few hundred yards from the first, before it was towed away by traffic wardens in the early hours of Friday for violating parking restrictions.
Police said the two vehicles were clearly linked. Both bombs were quickly defused but, had they gone off, would have caused significant injuries and deaths, police said.
The thwarted bomb plot came to light two years after a coordinated attack by suicide bombers on London's transport system killed 52 commuters. It appeared to have similarities to an earlier plot in which an al Qaeda militant planned to blow up gas-filled bombs inside limousines in London.
With a mixture of good luck, attentiveness and policing foiling Friday's potential attack, police remained on alert.
Plans for policing of public events in the coming 10 days were reviewed to ensure public security, including a Gay Pride parade in London on Saturday, the Wimbledon tennis tournament and a concert for Princess Diana on Sunday.
"Appropriate policing will be in place for all events," a police spokeswoman said. "Safety and security is our number one priority."
CCTV surveillance
Despite the continuing threat, tourists were stoical.
"You could be safe anywhere or you could be safe nowhere. It hasn't put me off travelling here," said Ivonne Geller, 49, a tourist from Mexico strolling outside the Tiger Tiger club.
"I just feel angry about the methods of these people who try to harm innocent people."
Intelligence sources believe there is a growing probability that the plot was hatched by an al Qaeda-style group.
"The feeling it is Islamist, rather than the other possibilities, is very quietly growing stronger," a source said.
The area of London where the car bombs were left, known as Haymarket, is one of the busiest in the capital and one of the most intensely monitored by CCTV surveillance.
Police said they were studying hundreds of hours of footage in the hunt for possible suspects. The U.S. television channel ABC reported that a "crystal clear" image of a suspect had been found, but British police would not confirm that.
Security sources said an important angle of investigation was an Islamist Web site called al-Hesbah which on Thursday carried a posting by a regular contributor saying that London was going to be bombed, according to CBS television.
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