BOTH UNITED Kingdom and United States embassies have been attacked in recent years by Islamic groups. The U.K. Embassy in Turkey was bombed in 2003 killing its chief consul and most notoriously, the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania killed 224 people, including nationals of those countries, 12 Americans and injured more than 4,500 people. London's emergency services and public transport officials had been meeting together for several years said Deputy Commissioner of Police Mark Shields, resulting in contingency plans should such an attack take place.
"It was a realistic possibility especially since the start of the Iraq war which we knew would increase the threat massively ... and so you could see that level of preparation in the aftermath of the blast. People were relatively calm and emergency services organised."
HARD TO PREVENT
DCP Shields is a Scotland Yard police officer who is on secondment to the Jamaica Constabulary Force. An attack such as Thursday's is especially hard to prevent for a number of reasons, said DCP Shields. London's public transport system carries over three million people per day and he said: "It is much easier to screen people at an airport, but you cannot with the high numbers of passengers on a public transport system."
The bombs used in the attack each weighed 10 pounds and could be fitted inside a knapsack, said Scotland Yard Assistant Commis-sioner Andy Hayman.
Despite Londoners' experience of bombs by Irish Republican groups, the ease with which the devices can be concealed is also a factor. "Londoners are street-wise to the threat and have long known to report unattended baggage but even with this and an extensive close circuit television surveillance, you need to spot every bomb, every time to be successful."
As the Irish Republican Army (IRA) once reminded the British government, DCP Shields said, it remained a case of: "We only have to be lucky once. You will have to be lucky every time." But "excellent police intelligence" he said had led to successes with four Islamist attacks previously being caught.
NO WARNING
An Islamic group is suspected to be behind the bombing and one, the Secret Organisation Group of al-Qaeda of Jihad Organisation in Europe has already claimed responsibility. Islamists, he noted, were fundamentally harder to beat because they attacked without warning whereas attacks by Irish Republicans were proceeded by a coded warning to give security forces time to clear the bomb's target area. But attacks by Islamic groups have not been accompanied by such warnings.
This, said DCP Shields, meant "Police can only rely on detection and will be less able to prevent and warn of bomb threats leading to larger loss of life."
The IRA bombing campaign shifted in the 1990s from targeting loss of life to causing economic disruption, which came with coded warnings sent to British security forces. Their 1993 bombing of London's financial district killed just one man but cost US$907 million in damage to insured property, according to the Organisation for Economic Development and Cooperation.
But al-Qaeda he said, chooses targets to cause mass civilian deaths, such as the bombing of Madrid's train system last year and the hijacking of airliners for use as flying bombs in the 9/11 attacks in the United States.
He, however. insists that his colleagues at Scotland Yard are extremely motivated to find those responsible and the next few days would be vital in safely removing evidence for forensic analysis. "My colleagues in London have significant experience in terrorism and so I honestly believe it's not a matter of if the terrorists are caught, but when," he explained.
Of the four scenes, the hardest to deal with, he said, would be the three explosions in the London underground, where heat and
the presence of rats made the speedy retrieval of human evidence essential.
Ross Shiel
