Posted on 06/29/2007 5:30:51 AM PDT by jimbo123
The threat of terror returned to London today after a car bomb was found outside a West End nightclub.
The apparent target was Tiger Tiger in Haymarket, where up to 1,700 people were inside on 'ladies night'.
It is feared the attack is the work of Al Qaeda militants, who plotted a similar attack on the capital's Ministry of Sound nightclub and Bluewater shopping centre. The British-born Al Qaeda gang was jailed last month.
One witness described seeing a green gas cylinder in the boot of the car, believed to be a silver Mercedes, which probably contained explosives. The boot was packed with hundreds of nails. There were also two more cylinders on the back seat.
The size of the bomb could have caused major structural damage to the club which is spread over four floors.
One senior anti-terrorist source said: "This was a viable device which could have caused massive damage and killed hundreds if it had worked.
(Excerpt) Read more at thisislondon.co.uk ...
L0L a 5 gal tank of propane for the BBQ?
OK, now let’s see how the PC Brits respond. Will they continue to have more cries of “islam is peaceful religion”?
The device, consisting of 200 liters of fuel, gas cylinders and nails linked to a triggering mechanism, was found in a car in Haymarket, in the city’s busy nightclub and theater district shortly before 2 a.m. (0100 GMT) on Friday.
I-slam has to be banned in western countries, it’s just a question of when.
Ideal bomb container. Put fins on it and paint it OD and you would have a WWII bomb.
courtesy of al_c
THe Bali bomb used propane tanks, as did the one that destroyed the Marine Barracks in Lebanon. If you can rapidly saturate an area with explosive gas, it seeps into every nook and cranny (thus turning the bulding itself into a bomb) and detonate it, the devastation is pretty bad.
Nothing funny about it.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2720814.ece
Whitehall sources said that the police and security services were looking at possible international links - including similarities to car bombs used by insurgents in Iraq.
Looks like they were targeting the nightclub at it’s 2AM closing time. The Tiger Tiger club has a capacity of 1,700.
Tomorrow, we will hear how Achmed was working construction and was headed home to BBQ when he ran out of gas there. Nothing to see here. No terrorism. Just another mere coincidence
A pathetic bomb and pathetic attempt. This may be a warning or a message. Next time may be a real propane bomb with a real trigger such as C4 or dynamite
If this bomb went off Muslims world wide would have been joyous and titillated at liquored up Britons being mass murdered at a decadent nightclub
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article2003808.ece
Inside officers discovered a “significant quantity” of petrol, nails and gas cylinders. They used a remote-controlled device to check the vehicle before bomb squad officers made it safe.
If the bomb had exploded, police said that the shrapnel would have killed or injured anyone within a wide area. The bomb itself could have caused a fireball as big as a house followed by a large shock wave.
Terror groups like al-Qaeda are believed to have been planning attacks on nightclubs, which are considered by Islamic fundamentalists to be symbols of Western decadence.
Tiger Tiger is a combined bar, restaurant and nightclub, part of a wider national chain, that opens from midday until the early hours of the morning. It has several floors, and is believed to have a capacity of over 1,000 - although staff said that only around 650 were in the club at the time of the incident. Last night was scheduled to be ‘ladies’ night’ at the club, complete with female DJ.
in preparation for the big wedding tomorrow.
200L.
That’s 53 gallons.
That would be quite a big bang.
I wonder who the brave bomb squad officer who had to disarm this thing is?
Out of curiosity about the graphic you put up, what is the meaning of that expression (’C’ OE ‘star’ IS ‘cross’) that appears initially?
British police forensics officers approach the area where police defused a bomb in central London, June 29, 2007.
Guy Dresser and Luke Baker
Published: Friday, June 29, 2007
LONDON (Reuters) - British police defused a car bomb in central London on Friday and said the device made up of gasoline, gas cylinders and nails could have caused significant loss of life, anti-terrorism authorities said.
The bomb was left in a car parked outside a nightclub in the busy heart of London shortly after 1 a.m. (midnight GMT), when "hundreds" of people were in the vicinity, Peter Clarke, the head of London's anti-terrorist police, told a news conference.
"It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been significant injury or loss of life," he said.
Clarke said all lines of investigation were open, but that it was too early to speculate about who might have been responsible. Responding to a question about possible links to a bomb found in France, Clarke said he was in contact with international partners, but gave no details.
He said he could not ignore the similarities between the latest case and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an al Qaeda-linked militant had planned to detonate gas-fuelled bombs inside vehicles in London and other cities.
Security services were called to investigate the vehicle, a light green Mercedes, after ambulance workers, attending an unrelated incident outside the nightclub, noticed what they thought was smoke billowing inside the car.
The security services discovered "significant quantities" of petrol, a number of gas cylinders and a large number of nails, Clarke said, and then manually defused the bomb.
The discovery came hours after new Prime Minister Gordon Brown named a cabinet to succeed Tony Blair's. It posed a first major challenge for Brown's three-day-old administration, and particularly his new home secretary, Jacqui Smith.
Smith was to chair a meeting of the government's top emergency committee, Cobra, on Friday, Brown said.
"The first duty of a government is the security of the people and as the police and security services have said on so many occasions we face a serious and continued security threat to our country," Brown told reporters.
"This incident does recall the need for us to be vigilant at all times and the public to be alert."
Security around parliament was stepped up, with police body-searching drivers of vehicles entering the compound.
The bomb alert came almost two years after a series of coordinated suicide bomb attacks on London's transport network killed 52 commuters, the first Islamist suicide bombings in western Europe. London has frequently been on edge since.
(Additional reporting by Mark Trevelyan, Adrian Croft, Michael Holden, Avril Ormsby and Katherine Baldwin)
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