London Police Simulating Chemical Attack

Police were staging a chemical weapons attack Sunday on the London Underground, decontaminating scores of “casualties” on streets in the center of the capital before ferrying them to a nearby hospital.

Hundreds of police and emergency services personnel were involved in the drill in the Square Mile, London’s financial district, to test how well emergency services would react to a terrorist strike in the capital. Police have closed off Bank subway station and several surrounding streets for the exercise.

The Department of Transport said the simulation, the first large-scale exercise since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States, was not being held in response to a specific threat.

“Most people realize that we live in extremely difficult times. We’ve got to prepare against all sorts of eventualities,” Transport Secretary Alistair Darling told Sky News television. “I am afraid we live in the sort of a world where an attack on London can’t be ruled out.”