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UK police hunt chemical bomb after raid

Posted on: Saturday, 3 June 2006, 10:45 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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