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June 29, 2007

Car bomb near Piccadilly - UPDATED - UPDATED again re: Hyde Park NEW yet again!

scroll to bottom for updates

...defused before it went off and murdered hundreds.*

LONDON - Police thwarted an apparent terror attack Friday near the famed Piccadilly Circus in the heart of London, defusing a bomb made of a lethal mix of gasoline, propane gas, and nails after an ambulance crew spotted smoke coming from a silver Mercedes outside a nightclub.

The bomb in the city's theater district was powerful enough to have caused "significant injury or loss of life" — possibly killing hundreds, British anti-terror police chief Peter Clarke said. ...

Officers were called to The Haymarket, just south of Piccadilly Circus, after an ambulance crew — responding to a call just before 1:30 a.m. about an injury at a nearby nightclub — noticed smoke coming from a car parked in front of the club, Clarke said.

The busy Haymarket thoroughfare linking Piccadilly Circus to the Pall Mall is packed with restaurants, bars, a cinema complex and West End theaters, and was buzzing at that hour.

It was ladies' night Thursday, nicknamed "Sugar 'N Spice," at the massive Tiger Tiger nightclub, a three-story venue that at full capacity can pack in 1,770 people and stays open until 3 a.m. ...

Police said they did not have any suspects, and urged people who were out in the area to call Britain's anti-terror hot line with any information.

Hmmmm ... well, I certainly have no clue who would be targeting nightclubs and immodest ladies in the heart of London[istan].

You?

UPDATE cluelessness from the Left knows no bounds. Demented Underground has no entry on its "breaking news" forum and comments from some of the kosskiddies are breathtaking

Again, police/detective work is the 'real' way to fight terror.
This military interventionist shit just doesn't cut it.

by NYFM

Yep, yet ANOTHER good job by the police.... being aware and doing the job the way they were trained. All accomplished without mass suspension of civil rights, turning the intelligence infrastructure against its citizens, and waging a bloodbath in a foreign land with no end in sight.

By the way George and Tony, notice that they are attacking us HERE and THERE. This idiot war didn't do squat.

by Dillonfence

What police/detective work on this? This didn't come from information developed by the police but only because the EMTs were suspicious of the car. You know, the massive "we must be vigilant" campaign that has been going on here for sometime and that is decried by Leftists who denounce such calls as "fear-mongering" or as an encroachment on personal privacy. And Dillion also ignores that much of London streets have surveillance cameras. When that has been discussed for American cities, the same "terrorism is a police matter not military" crowd start screeching about "privacy".

Dillion's expected line of pointing to the car bomb as "proof of the failure of war" is just part usual Leftist "thought". It's like saying the occassional drowning at the beach is caused by lifeguards, because regardless of how many people they DO save, NO ONE would drown if we just banned swimming.

For the Left, no Western country would be attacked, if we just did what the Islamists demand.

And of course, the comment thread would be complete without the usual poo-pooing of the incident itself

experts are saying it's not a car bomb (where the shell of the car causes shrapnel), it would have created a fireball at most. And the nails were on the ground, and would have just ended in the ground.

Probably some disaffected youth, with no connections of any terrorist organizations what so ever, it would have been far more professional if it were.

So business as usual. Over hyped charges of huge damage, destruction and death.

Yep, it didn't go off, it didn't kill hundreds on the new PM's first day in office on the heels of the "offensive knighting of Rushdie." Nothing to see, move along. Just "disaffected youths". Kinda like TPing a house.

UPDATE 2 Aha! DU finally notices and William Teach has picked out some choice comments.

*My immediate reaction was, George Brown gets to show what he can do when some ‘terra-ist’ attack happens. Special Branch dirty-tricks dept?

*I figured it was Shrub’s welcome to 10 Downing St. gift . . . a reason to align with the King in the war against the brown people.

Ah!! Behold the alleged brain of Truthers!

UPDATE 3 And now there is a "car of interest" in Hyde Park.

It hasn't hit the 'net yet, but radio reports are coming in that it IS another car bomb.

Boy, those BushNeoConZionists who brought down the WTC on 9/11 are gettin' busy in London, eh?

UPDATE 4 Scotland Yard is now backing off from linking The Haymarket with Hyde Park

Later Friday, police cordoned off London's central Hyde Park searching a suspect car in an underground car park, amid fears that devices could have been planted in other parts of the city.

But Scotland Yard said later the two incidents were not linked.

Yet now there is a THIRD street closing, this time Fleet street
LONDON (Reuters) - Police sealed roads near Fleet Street in central London on Friday, the third area to be cordoned off in the British capital after a car bomb was defused outside a nightclub.

One policeman at the scene said police had been alerted to a suspicious package. Another said there was a suspicious vehicle. Earlier, explosive experts defused a car bomb outside a nightclub and police were searching a second suspect vehicle near Hyde Park.

UPDATE 5 Now the police ARE tieing the two incidents
Police have confirmed that not one, but two massive car bombs were set to explode in the heart of London's West End.
The first, in Haymarket, was packed with petrol, gas cannisters and nails, and was defused after police were alerted by an ambulance crew called to an incident at a nearby nightclub.

The second was in a car that was illegally parked nearby and towed to the Park Lane car pound.

Staff there alerted police because "it smelled of gas."

In a news conference Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke said the second car, a blue Mercedes, was parked a few hundred yards from the first in Cockspur Street which runs between Haymarket and Trafalgar Square.

It was issued with a parking ticket at around 2:30am before being towed to the Park Lane car pound where staff alerted police.

DAC Clarke said: "The vehicle was found to contain very similar materials to the first vehicle in Haymarket.

"There was a considerable amount of fuel, gas cannisters and a quantity of nails.

"This device, like the first was viable and was made safe by officers.

"The discovery of a second bomb is obviously troubling and reinforces the need for the public to remain vigilant."

Ya think?

(h/t Beth at MVRWC)

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Posted by Darleen at June 29, 2007 01:32 PM

Comments

Thanks for being on top of this and letting Jeff know about it. It needs exposure: the terrorists are still active and, in this case, still quite capable. Bad news for us - we need to keep vigilant. But more importantly, I think we need to increase our rhetoric and comments bashing and denigrating terrorism.

Posted by: Muslihoon at June 29, 2007 09:36 AM

God, those idiot nutrooters sound like parodies of themselves. Those comments pretty much sum up what they're about. Disaffected youth; overblown, "Shrub" operation, even the idiot who said George Brown. What a bunch of tools.

Posted by: Beth at June 29, 2007 06:10 PM

Did my comment get eaten?

Posted by: Beth at June 29, 2007 06:12 PM

Beth, I see it. :-)

Posted by: Darleen at June 29, 2007 06:41 PM

'Rajeshree Patel, who was in the nightclub when it was evacuated, said the car "was parked at an angle by the front door of TigerTiger with all four doors open and the headlights on."'

Yeah, just what terrorists do. They draw attention to their 'bomb' before it goes off.

So, we have a car-bomb that might as well have a neon sign attached to it; another car-bomb "thwarted" later in the day; and a flaming, non-exploding jeep driven by a guy with a non-exploding suicide vest that scores zero casualties...

Something's off.

Posted by: Alex Stevens at June 30, 2007 06:58 PM

Let's see here. Bush has made the world a much more dangerous place and has been al-Qaeda's best recruiting tool. And also there's really no terror threat and if you think there is you're a bedwetter.

Cognitive dissonance should be mandatory.

Posted by: Pablo at July 1, 2007 06:31 AM

Yes, something is off. Perhaps the better recruits are being shipped to some other front. Where might that be?

Oh yes, that little Mesopotamian adventure, right in the heart of the caliphate. Looks like we are fighting them there instead of here, or at least the first team.

Posted by: Chris at July 1, 2007 09:39 AM

Yes, Chris. Great point. This incident clearly shows that we're fighting them there so we don't have to fight them here.

Posted by: Josh at July 1, 2007 01:14 PM

You'll notice that they weren't here, won't you, Josh?

BTW, is that a surrender on the "Progressive totalitarianism" thread, and if so are you going to apologize for your "vilest smear"?

Posted by: Pablo at July 1, 2007 01:40 PM