Saturday, June 30, 2007
Glasgow Attack Seen Tied to London Bombs
By IAN STEWART
The
Associated Press
Two police officers view screens in the
Central Communications Command Centre for the Metropolitan Police, where all
CCTV footage is recorded for use by the Metropolitan Police , in south London,
Saturday June 30, 2007, following Frioday's two failed car bombs. The Centre is
where Police watch the whole of London on thousands of CCTV cameras, across the
region. Detectives are Saturday scouring the two vehicles for forensic evidence
and examining hundreds of hours of CCTV footage for hints about the identities
of the bombers.
GLASGOW, Scotland -- A Jeep Cherokee trailing a
cascade of flames rammed into Glasgow airport on Saturday, shattering glass
doors just yards from passengers at the check-in counters. Police said they
believed the attack was linked to two car bombs found in London the day
before.
Britain raised its terror alert to "critical", the highest
possible level, and the Bush administration announced plans to increase security
at airports and on mass transit.
One of the men in the car was in
critical condition at a hospital with severe burns, while the other was in
police custody, said Scottish Police Chief Constable Willie Rae. He said a
"suspect device" was found on the man at the hospital and it was taken to a safe
location where it was being investigated.
Rae would not say whether the
device was a suicide belt. British security officials said evidence pointed
toward the Glasgow attack being a suicide mission.
"I can confirm that we
believe the incident at Glasgow airport is linked to the events in London
yesterday," Rae said. "There are clearly similarities and we can confirm that
this is being treated as a terrorist incident."
Police foiled the plot
Friday after two cars were found in central London packed with explosives, one
outside a nightclub near Piccadilly Circus and another parked nearby.
A
British government security official said the methods used in the airport attack
and Friday's thwarted plots were similar, with all three vehicles carrying large
quantities of flammable liquid.
The official spoke on condition of
anonymity because of the sensitivity of the information.
Police and MI5
had no specific intelligence warning of a plan to attack Scotland, but they have
monitored a host of suspected terrorists and plots there, he said. It was not
yet clear whether there was an international element to the planning or funding
of the attacks, the official said.
The new terror threat presents Prime
Minister Gordon Brown, a Scot who took office on Wednesday, with an enormous
challenge and comes at a time of already heightened vigilance one week before
the anniversary of the July 7 London transit attacks, which killed 52
people.
"I know that the British people will stand together, united,
resolute and strong," Brown said Saturday in a televised
statement.
President Bush was being kept informed of the situation, the
White House said. "We're in contact with British authorities on the matter,"
said Gordon Johndroe, a spokesman for the National Security Council, in
Washington.
The green Jeep barreled toward Glasgow's main airport
terminal shortly after 3 p.m. Leeson said bollards, security posts outside the
entrance, stopped the driver from driving into the bustling terminal, but the
nose of the vehicle smashed the glass doors.
"If he'd got through, he'd
have killed hundreds, obviously," he said.
AP photographs from the
scene showed the car hit the building at an angle and was poking into the
terminal. The Jeep struck the building directly in front of check-in counters,
where dozens of passengers were lined up, police said.
Lynsey McBean, a
witness at the terminal, said the driver kept trying to push the car forward
after it got stuck, and "the wheels were spinning and smoke was coming from
them."
She said one of the men then took out a plastic gasoline canister
and poured a liquid under the car. "He then set light to it," said McBean, 26,
from Erskine, Scotland.
Police subdued the driver and a passenger, both
described by witnesses as South Asian, a term used to refer to people from
India, Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries in the region. The previous
round of terrorist activity in Britain, in July 2005, was largely carried out by
local Muslims, raising ethnic tensions in Britain.
Witnesses said one of
the men was engulfed in flames and spoke "gibberish" as an official used a fire
extinguisher to douse the fire.
Rae said one bystander was taken to the
hospital with a leg injury.
The airport was evacuated and all flights
suspended. Police said Liverpool Airport and roads around Edinburgh were also
closed.
The attack left passengers shaken and stranded on the first day
of summer vacation for Glasgow schools. At the time of the crash, the airport
was bustling with families heading out on vacation.
Meanwhile in London,
police were gathering evidence from closed circuit television footage, as
forensics experts searched for clues into the foiled bombings. The two Mercedes
cars had been loaded with gasoline, gas canisters and nails in one of the
capital's busiest areas on a night when Londoners like to go out and party.
Security officials and police denied an ABC News report that they had a "crystal
clear" picture of one suspect from CCTV footage.
The vehicles were found
abandoned in the early hours of Friday in what police believe was an attempt to
kill scores or even hundreds of people. Detectives said they were keeping an
open mind about the bombers' identities, but terrorism experts said the signs
pointed to a cell linked to or inspired by al-Qaida.
One car was
abandoned outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub on Haymarket in the heart of
London's entertainment district. The other had been towed after being parked
illegally on nearby Cockspur Street and was discovered in an impound lot about a
mile away in Park Lane, near Hyde Park.
Brown came to office pledging to
win back the support of voters disenchanted over the Iraq war. But he backed
Tony Blair's decision to send troops to Iraq in 2003 and has shown support for
greater anti-terror measures that have angered Britain's some 1.8 million
Muslims.
The airport incident carried reminders of a foiled plot in
December 1999 to attack Los Angeles International Airport, when customs agents
stopped an Algerian-born man in a car packed with 124 of explosives. He was
jailed for 22 years and prosecutors said he was intent on bombing the Los
Angeles airport on the eve of the millennium.
On the Net:
http://www.glasgowairport.com