UK police hunt chemical bomb after raid

By Michael Holden

LONDON (Reuters) – British anti-terrorist officers are
hunting for a chemical bomb that could be used in an attack in
Britain after a major raid failed to uncover a device they
believe exists, a police source said on Saturday.

More than 250 officers, some wearing chemical, biological
and radiological protection suits, shot one man and arrested
another during a dawn raid on an east London house on Friday.

“What we are looking for is some form of viable chemical
device,” a police source told Reuters of the search on the
property.

“A device that would have a fatal effect on someone
standing nearby both from the explosion and from the chemical
it contained,” the source said, adding the device being sought
was a type of conventional bomb surrounded by toxic material.

Police have said nothing suspicious had been found in an
initial search of the house. They had also reassured the public
in the area there was nothing to suggest they were at risk.

The operation, one of the biggest since last July’s suicide
bombings in the capital, was prompted by suspicions that the
house could have been used for making bombs or chemical
weapons.

“Because of the very specific nature of the intelligence,
we planned an operation that was designed to mitigate any
threat to the public either from firearms or from hazardous
substances,” said Peter Clarke, head of the UK’s anti-terrorism
branch.

The police source said officers were unsure of the size of
the device and of how many people it could kill.

If no bomb materialized, it was possible the device had
been moved, that someone else was hiding it, that it had never
been built or that the intelligence had been wrong, the source
said.

Some newspapers speculated police were looking for a
suicide vest but the source said that was not the case.

POSSIBLE TARGETS

Unnamed security chiefs, quoted in newspapers, said they
believed an attack was imminent, with possible targets
including the underground train network or pubs crowded with
fans watching the soccer World Cup tournament which starts next
week.

“We’re 100 percent certain that an attack was being
planned. If we haven’t stopped it, it could take place very
soon,” the Daily Mirror quoted a police source as saying.

The cordon thrown around the house was much smaller than
that used to guard a property used as a bomb-making factory by
four British Islamists who carried out last July’s attacks on
London’s transport system which killed 52 commuters.

Detectives said the latest operation was not linked to
those attacks although the country has been on high alert since
then.

London police Commissioner Ian Blair, Britain’s top
officer, has said three terrorism plots have been thwarted
since the July bombings and groups were planning further
attacks.

The 23-year-old man, shot at the house during the raid, is
recovering in hospital. His injury is not said to be
life-threatening and he has been arrested on suspicion of “the
commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism.”
A second man was arrested at the house under the Terrorism Act.

Neighbors said the family, who lived at the house in the
ethnically-mixed Forest Gate area of London, were Bangladeshi
and described them as friendly. The family said it was shocked
and angered by the police operation.

“We would like to make it clear that we are completely
innocent and in no way involved in any terrorist activity,” the
family said in a statement on Saturday.