Disaster averted in London

[fryingdutchman]

Looks like a near miss in London today.

I guess this kind of shit is going to ramp up in the wake of the power shift following Blair's resignation, and the upcoming anniversary of the '05 bombings.

Read on...

Explosives-Packed Car Defused in London
By D'ARCY DORAN and DAVID STRINGER, Associated Press Writers
54 minutes ago

LONDON - Police thwarted an apparent terror attack early Friday after an ambulance crew reported seeing a smoking car parked near Piccadilly Circus that turned out to be packed with gasoline, nails, gas cylinders, and a detonator.

The explosives _ safely defused by a bomb squad _ were powerful enough to have caused "significant injury or loss of life" _ possibly killing hundreds, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said.

"Forensic staff are still examining the device, but once we know more about it, we'll know more about what type of individuals are behind this," a British security official told The Associated Press, speaking on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.

Officers were called to The Haymarket, near Piccadilly Circus, after an ambulance crew _ responding to a call just before 1:30 a.m. about an injury at a nearby nightclub _ noticed smoke coming from the car, Clarke said.

A bomb squad was called to the scene, and manually disabled the bomb.

Early photographs of the silver Mercedes showed a canister, bearing the words "patio gas," indicating it was propane gas, next to the car. The back door was open with blankets spilling out.

Clarke said police would examine footage from closed-circuit TV cameras in the area.

The area _ packed with restaurants, bars, a cinema complex and theaters _ was busy and buzzing at that hour. Haymarket links Piccadilly Circus to the north to the Pall Mall at its southern end.

The security official said Britain's domestic spy agency MI5 also would examine possible connections between the bomb attempt and at least two similar foiled plots _ including a planned attack on a West End nightclub in 2004 and a thwarted attempt to use limousines packed with gas canisters to attack targets in London and New York.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who took office on Wednesday, said the incident was a reminder that Britain faces a serious and continuous threat of terrorist attacks and that people should be alert.

"I will stress to the Cabinet that the vigilance must be maintained over the next few days," Brown said.

The attempted bombing comes just days after Brown succeeded Tony Blair as prime minister, and a week before the second anniversary of the deadly July 7 London bombings.

[Ellyllions]

Couldn't have been terrorists as there is no such thing...

*please note the thinly veiled sarcasm*

[BITEYOASS]

Never trust a Paki! And that statement has nothing to with Islam, cause I got nothing against turks, kurds, North Africans, some Iraqis and some other groups I forgot to mention. Just Pakis, Saudis, Zionists, Red chinese and rich self-righteous white fucks that are causing all the fuckin problems in the world.

[binnie]

It's sad news on the one hand, but great news that it was diffused on the other.

The UK has a long history of terrorists bombings, buit I don't think they ever get any easier to hear about.

Live Earth at Wembley Stadium on July 7th has to be a pretty big target for these fuckers.

The terrorists only have to get lucky once; the security and police forces have to get lucky every damn time.

[fryingdutchman]

Originally posted by binnie

Live Earth at Wembley Stadium on July 7th has to be a pretty big target for these fuckers.

Shit, for that matter they could go after the "Concert For Diana." Isn't that this weekend?

Maybe this little stunt was a distraction technique so they could get their real shit ready at Wembley...

[lonnieg5]

Originally posted by fryingdutchman
Shit, for that matter they could go after the "Concert For Diana." Isn't that this weekend?

Maybe this little stunt was a distraction technique so they could get their real shit ready at Wembley...

I bet you're right.

[FORD]

The "detonator" was a cell phone. I have a feeling this is going to turn out to be bullshit.

Probably some foreman from a construction site picking up some nails and gasoline for the generators.

[FORD]

Ex - CIA agent Larry Johnson adds his .02......

London Bomb--What a Crock of Crap!!

by
Larry C Johnson

So I turn on the telly this morning and find breathless CNN anchors hyperventilating over the nuclear suicide car weapon of mass destruction discovered smoldering outside of a London nightclub. One report from the scene notes that:


London police were contacted when witnesses saw a Mercedes being driven erratically near London West End night club Tiger Tiger, and the driver jumped out of the automobile and ran away. The car was reported to have two gasoline canisters and be full of nails.

CNN adds:


Explosives officers discovered the fuel and nails attached to a "potential means of detonation," inside the vehicle. Officers "courageously" disabled the trigger by hand, he said. Security sources told CNN that the "relatively crude device" in the first car contained at least 200 liters, or about 50 gallons, of fuel in canisters.

You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade. The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.

For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive. If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed. Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second. Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incendiary. If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED. Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapenal.

The fact that "officers courageously disabled the trigger by hand" coupled with the report of the smoke in the car leads me to believe that the mad London "bomber" tried to construct a Molotov cocktail of sorts and lit a cloth fuze. Fortunately he left the windows in the car up and there was not enough oxygen to really get the fire going. Looks like the brave British police reached in and snuffed the flame.

Judging from the overreaction to this non-incident I think we can safely conclude that Osama Bin Laden will remain holed up in Pakistan and let the fear mongers at CNN, MSNBC, and FOX do the dirty business of scaring the shit out of people.


Link (http://noquarter.typepad.com/my_weblog/2007/06/london-bomb--wh.html)

[Guitar Shark]

And once again, FORD links to a liberal conspiracy blog as his source for information.

[sadaist]

Originally posted by FORD
Probably some foreman from a construction site picking up some nails and gasoline for the generators.

In a Mercedes?

[Angel]

There's a second car now:
Terror threat returns to London after two car bombs defused
1 hour, 0 minute ago



LONDON (AFP) - Police defused a second car bomb Friday, hours after finding a first explosive device, the city's anti-terrorist chief said, adding that the two were clearly linked and calling the development "troubling."


The find raised the spectre of possible al-Qaeda terrorism returning to the British capital, two days after a new government took power and a week before the second anniversary of the city's July 7 2005 suicide bombings, which killed 52.


"This like the first device was potentially viable and was made safe by the explosives officers," said Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan Police anti-terrorism chief.


Like the first car, the second one was a Mercedes which was found parked near the Haymarket entertainment district of central London.


But while the first one was discovered by security staff who called in police, the second was taken to an underground car pound near Park Lane, where the explosives were discovered after police were alerted later in the day.


"There was a considerable anount of fuel and gas canisters. As in the first vehicle, there was also a substantial quantity of nails," said Clarke.


Professor Anthony Glees, an intelligence expert at Brunel University, said the apparent simultaneous bombing attempt pointed to Al-Qaeda.


"There even more evidence now that this is an al-Qaeda plot. It's an al-Qaeda memo to Gordon Brown," he said, referring to the new prime minister who succeeded Tony Blair on Wednesday.


"It's an al-Qaeda memo to the British public, that they are determined to carry on...their attack on ordinary British people," he said.


Speaking before the second device was found, Brown said the alert was a fresh warning of the threat faced by London, which next week marks the second anniversary of the July 7 2005 suicide attacks which killed 52 people and the four bombers.


Speaking after the first bomb was found, Clarke would not speculate on who was behind the device -- comprising gas cylinders, petrol and nails -- found outside a nightclub on Haymarket near Piccadilly Circus.


But he said: "Even at this stage it is obvious that if this device had detonated, there could have been significant injury or loss of life."


Rajeshree Patel, who was in the Tiger Tiger club when it was evacuated, told BBC television: "I think there would have been a lot of fatalities. There were approximately 500 people inside Tiger Tiger at the time."


Clarke said police had no warning of an attack and it was unclear if the nightclub was the target but there were similarities with previous plots.


Members of an Islamist-inspired gang were jailed for life earlier this year after plotting to attack a number of high-profile British targets, including London's Ministry of Sound nightclub.


And a Muslim convert was put behind bars for 30 years here last November for plotting devastating attacks in London and New York, including a plan to detonate limousines packed with explosives at key landmarks.


A security source quoted by Britain's Press Association news agency said it was "entirely possible" the latest incident had overseas links as insurgents in Iraq had used similar methods, but they were keeping an open mind.


The alerts provided a baptism of fire not just for Brown, but also for his Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, who was less than 24 hours into the role.

She met Brown in Downing Street and afterwards called for public vigilance.

"We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism," she said.

Smith earlier chaired a meeting of the government's emergency contigencies committee, COBRA, and reported to Brown's senior ministers at an extended cabinet meeting.

The first bomb was discovered by chance -- Clarke said an ambulance crew treating a person at Tiger Tiger called in police explosives experts after noticing a metallic green Mercedes car giving off smoke just before 2:00am (0100 GMT).

Inside they found "significant quantities" of petrol and a "large number" of nails, he added.

Police sources said there was as much as 60 litres of petrol on the back seat of the car and in the boot (trunk).

A hunt was on for the driver with detectives expected to scour footage from closed circuit television cameras in streets surrounding Haymarket, which is busy with revellers into the early hours of the morning.

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/s/afp/britain_attacks

[FORD]

Originally posted by Guitar Shark
And once again, FORD links to a liberal conspiracy blog as his source for information.

Larry Johnson is hardly a Liberal. He was doing right wing commentary for FAUX Noise until PlameGate pissed him off. (He and Valerie Plame were in the same graduating class at the CIA academy)

[FORD]

Originally posted by sadaist
In a Mercedes?

Why not? Gas is even more ridiculously expensive in the UK than it is here. If you don't actually need to haul materials, why drive a big gas guzzling truck, when you could drive a more economical vehicle, probably with a diesel engine?

[Nickdfresh]

It's pretty clear that this was the work of amateurs...

And it's pretty hard not to be skeptical when we've had no significant terrorist convictions in five years, and the last major plot involving airliners turned out to be little more than speculative shampoo bomb fantasies that was prematurely rolled up by the Brits under pressure by US authorities...

[Angel]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
It's pretty clear that this was the work of amateurs...

And it's pretty hard not to be skeptical when we've had no significant terrorist convictions in five years, and the last major plot involving airliners turned out to be little more than speculative shampoo bomb fantasies that was prematurely rolled up by the Brits under pressure by US authorities...

I agree with you on that one, Nick.

Is the new PM as Bush friendly as Blair was? Pretty suspect that this happens the day after he steps down...

[Nickdfresh]

No, I'm quite sure he thinks Bush and Blair are both total asshats...

But Sesh will know better than I.

[Angel]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
No, I'm quite sure he thinks Bush and Blair are both total asshats...

But Sesh will know better than I.


Hmmm.... "BCE" at work?

[BigBadBrian]

Originally posted by Nickdfresh
It's pretty clear that this was the work of amateurs...

And it's pretty hard not to be skeptical when we've had no significant terrorist convictions in five years, and the last major plot involving airliners turned out to be little more than speculative shampoo bomb fantasies that was prematurely rolled up by the Brits under pressure by US authorities...

Favoured tool of Iraqi insurgents, Kashmir separatists - and al-Qaida


Ian Cobain
Saturday June 30, 2007
The Guardian


Gas cylinder bombs are being used with increasing frequency by insurgents in Iraq. They have also been used in recent years by guerillas in Indian-ruled Kashmir and separatists in the north-eastern Indian state of Assam. Al-Qaida also used a gas cylinder bomb in an attack on western oil workers in Algeria in January.
Though the police said yesterday it was too early to be completely sure who was to blame, the attempted bomb attack in London's West End bore striking similarities with two planned al-Qaida attacks on the capital thwarted by police and the security service three years ago.

One gang which was assembling a fertiliser bomb was overheard in bugged conversations early in 2004 considering whether to target the Ministry of Sound nightclub, less than two miles from the scene of yesterday's attempted attack. A gang member was heard to say: "No one can even turn around and say 'oh they were innocent' those slags dancing around." Four months later a separate gang who had planned to attack targets in London using gas cylinder bombs almost identical in design to that discovered early yesterday were rounded up in raids across the country and jailed for terms up to 30 years. Members of both gangs had trained at al-Qaida camps in Pakistan.

Al-Qaida's ambitions for a gas cylinder bomb attack in London were first uncovered when Pakistani police seized a Toshiba laptop following an armed raid on a terrorist safehouse in July 2004.

On the machine's hard drive they discovered a file called eminem2, within which was a 39-page document titled Rough Presentation for the Gas Limos Project. This laid out a plan to pack a number of stretch limousines with explosives and gas cylinders, leave them in car parks at major buildings, and then detonate them. The document was signed EaB.

MI5 discovered that these were the initials of Esa al-Britani, an alibi used by Dhiren Barot, an Indian-born convert to Islam who lived in Kingsbury, north-west London. Barot had been a child when his father, a banker, moved his family to the UK. Before travelling to Kashmir in the mid-90s, and undergoing terrorism training, he had worked as a clerk at an airline office in Piccadilly.

Barot, 36, admitted writing the document after his arrest and also admitted planning attacks on the London underground and upon financial institutions in the New York area. He was jailed for life last November with the recommendation that he serve at least 40 years, reduced to 30 on appeal. The document drew on lessons learned from al-Qaida including the need to improvise and to feel no qualms about mass casualties. Barot had no plans to die himself and said he would arrange for his gang to escape. Seven other men arrested with him were jailed earlier this month for terms of 15 to 26 years.

Privately, senior police say that one of their main fears is the possibility of a car or truck bomb attack on an "iconic target", probably in London.

Members of the fertiliser bomb gang were also overheard considering an attack on the Bluewater shopping centre in Kent. Police moved in when they realised that some members were buying one-way airline tickets to Pakistan. Five men were jailed for life last April after a 14-month trial. Among them was Jawad Akbar, 23, who called his would-be victims as "slags". He was jailed for life with the recommendation that he serve a minimum of 17½ years.


The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,,2115286,00.html)

[DEMON CUNT]

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