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| Police clear part of Birmingham in new scare http://www.bbfans.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=52&t=20415 |
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| Author: | JimD [ 09 Jul 05, 22:44 ] |
| Post subject: | Police clear part of Birmingham in new scare |
Sat Jul 9, 2005 9:34 PM BST Reuters By Mark Trevelyan and Jeremy Lovell LONDON (Reuters) - Police evacuated the central entertainment district of Birmingham on Saturday evening after receiving a warning, two days after bombs killed more than 50 people in London. Thousands of people were being asked to leave Birmingham city centre while police roadblocks on main access routes stopped others from driving in. "We are asking people to leave Birmingham town centre and go home," said a police spokesman, who declined to elaborate on the nature of the warning. The operation was by far the biggest of several security scares in the country on Saturday in the wake of Thursday's attacks on London's transport system. Earlier, police revealed that the three bombs that ripped through London underground trains went off almost simultaneously, making it more likely they were detonated by timers rather than suicide bombers. A fourth bomb that blew up a bus almost an hour later was probably left in a bag and not triggered by a suicide bomber, they added. The blasts killed more than 50 people. Police did not speculate why the fourth bomb went off on a bus but media and security experts speculated that it had initially been destined for a train. Investigators were struggling in extreme heat to retrieve bodies still trapped underground two days after the attacks, and anxious relatives were frantically looking for loved ones missing since the rush-hour blasts on Thursday morning. Police said the process of recovering bodies could continue for days in a hot, narrow and rat-infested tunnel deep below ground at King's Cross station. "This is going to be a very long process...the conditions are extremely difficult. They're working their way through and bodies have been removed. We're very conscious of the anguish of those who are awaiting news of their loved ones," said Andy Trotter, deputy chief constable at British Transport Police. DEADLIEST ATTACK The government said people across the nation would be asked to observe two minutes' silence at noon on Thursday, a week after the deadliest peacetime attack on the capital. Police, who have made no arrests, said they were looking for no specific individuals and the bombs were made of high explosive, not home-made materials. A third Islamist group claimed responsibility for the blasts, which government ministers said bore the hallmarks of the Islamic militant al Qaeda network which was behind the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States. "All three bombs on the London Underground system actually exploded within seconds of each other at around 8:50 in the morning," Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick told a news conference. He said the fact that the bombs went off within 50 seconds of each other suggested they were set off by timers rather than detonated manually, although police did not rule that out. Police previously believed the three blasts were spread over nearly half an hour, but revised their information in the light of new technical data and witness statements, he said. |
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