London jittery after botched bombing

LONDON — Authorities stepped up security across Britain on Friday, from central London streets to the Wimbledon tennis tournament, after the discovery of a pair of Mercedes sedans packed with nails and canisters of propane gas.

The car bombs were apparently intended to bring carnage to the heart of London's theater district early Friday. Both failed to detonate.

If either had exploded, the result would have been "significant injury or loss of life," said Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist unit. The number of casualties, said Clark, "certainly could have been into the hundreds."

As police searched for car bombs and terrorists in the city of 7.5 million, roads were closed and police sirens echoed as jittery Londoners remained on high alert.

British security officials said they had seen a "crystal-clear" image on a security tape of the driver jumping from a green Mercedes, The New York Times, citing ABC News, reported on its Web site. ABC reported that the driver bore "a close resemblance" to a man arrested in an earlier bomb plot who was released for lack of evidence.

No group had claimed responsibility as of Friday night, and so far there have been no arrests. But security experts said the thwarted attack had all the markings of a well-planned jihadist terror operation.

Busy target

The first vehicle was discovered near Piccadilly Circus in the Haymarket area about 1 a.m. after an ambulance crew had been summoned to a nearby nightclub for an unrelated matter.

A member of the crew noticed smoke coming from a silver-green Mercedes parked in front of the Tiger Tiger nightclub. A police bomb squad arrived at the scene and disabled what they described as a "potentially explosive device."

Reports in the British media, unconfirmed by Scotland Yard, said a cellphone had been rigged as a detonator.

The area around Piccadilly Circus was, as usual for that hour, crowded with nightclubbers, theatergoers having a late dinner and tourists.

Police immediately shut down streets in the vicinity, rerouted traffic and began searching for possible suspects and other suspicious vehicles.

By midafternoon, police were called to an underground parking garage on Park Lane, an area of deluxe hotels near Hyde Park. Attendants at the garage noticed a strong smell of gasoline coming from a blue Mercedes that was in a section of the garage used by local authorities to impound cars towed for parking violations.

The second Mercedes "was found to contain very similar materials to those that had been found in the first car," Clarke said at a news conference.

The two vehicles, he said, "are clearly linked."

Police said the second Mercedes had been ticketed at 2:30 a.m. for being illegally parked on Cockspur Street, a few blocks away from where the first car was discovered at the other end of Haymarket. The second Mercedes was towed about an hour later.

It is not yet clear when the bombs were supposed to detonate or why they had failed to go off.

Spotting similarities

The botched attack came a little more than a week before the second anniversary of the July 7 London bombings in which four radical British Muslims killed themselves and 52 commuters in suicide attacks on the London Underground and a double-decker bus.

Friday's attack also came on the second full day of Prime Minister Gordon Brown's administration. Brown vowed to step up the battle against domestic terrorism, and newly appointed Home Secretary Jacqui Smith warned that al-Qaida-inspired terrorists still pose a grave threat to the nation.

"We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorists," Smith said. "While we can minimize the risks, we can never eliminate them."

Although the police have not yet identified any suspects, the center of London is watched by scores of surveillance cameras.

Police checked both vehicles and the bomb devices for fingerprints and DNA clues, as well as other trace evidence.

Clarke said there were similarities between Friday's incident and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an al-Qaida militant planned to detonate gas-fueled bombs in limousines.

The ringleader of that plot, Dhiren Barot, was convicted last year. Another group of Islamic radicals was convicted this year for a plot in which a big nightclub was among the targets.

Security around Parliament was stepped up, with police body-searching the drivers of cars entering the compound. Across town, security was tightened at the Wimbledon tennis championship and officials were reviewing security measures for Sunday's concert at Wembley Stadium in honor of Princess Diana that will be broadcast worldwide.

String of attacks

For years, the city was subjected to periodic bombings by the Irish Republican Army, including one at the Canary Wharf development in 1996 that killed two people, injured 100 and inflicted hundreds of millions of dollars in property damage.

Britain has experienced an increase in terrorism-related threats since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States and since it joined forces with U.S. troops to invade Iraq in 2003, which also provoked widespread domestic criticism.

Brown has pledged to respect Britain's commitments in Iraq, although there has been speculation he may accelerate the withdrawal of British troops.

Terrorist analyst Anthony Glees from Brunel University in London said in a BBC interview that the lack of intelligence warning of the possibility of imminent attacks "must be a cause for concern."

He said the ca3r bombs were "similar to devices found in Afghanistan and Iraq" and called them "an al-Qaida memo to Gordon Brown and the British people to show them they are still in business."

Postings on Internet sites suggested that the bombs could be tied to Queen Elizabeth II's recent decision to award a knighthood to author Salman Rushdie. His novel "The Satanic Verses" had been deemed blasphemous to Islam.

Inayat Bunglawala, a spokesman for the Muslim Council of Britain, appealed "to all sections of the community, Muslims and non-Muslims, if they have any information to come forward" and tell police.

Compiled from Chicago Tribune, Reuters, The Washington Post, The Associated Press and Los Angeles Times reports.