Posted on 11/30/2003 7:09:41 AM PST by knighthawk
LONDON: Britain's Sunday Times reported that security services feared a Christmas bombing campaign by al-Qaeda terrorists, but police said they had no intelligence that would prompt it to issue specific warnings.
Early editions of the national weekly said the police and MI5 security service were worried about simultaneous attacks on soft targets like shopping centres. It said unidentified security sources said suspects under surveillance have carried out possible reconnaissance or "dummy runs" for attacks on commercial centres.
However, London 's Metropolitan Police, who remain on a high state of alert, did not confirm any specific concerns about soft targets.
"There is no specific intelligence of places, events or people in the United Kingdom that would lead us at the moment to issue specific warnings to the public," a police statement said.
The newspaper quoted a spokesman for The British Retail Consortium, David Southwell, as saying the organisation was working closely with police and intelligence services and that they had not given any warnings that shopping centres were a specific target.
"They are potential targets," Southwell was quoted as saying.
Police around the country carried out searches and made a series of arrests in the past week, detaining suspects under anti-terrorism legislation. Two of the nine people arrested have been released.
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