The UK's renewed terror alert heightened last night following the discovery of a second car bomb in London containing "considerable amounts" of fuel, gas canisters and nails. Frank Millar, London Editor, reports.
The discovery, confirmed at a sombre Scotland Yard press conference, came after likely large-scale death and destruction was avoided when a first car bomb was disabled by explosives experts in the West End theatre district early yesterday.
The explosives team was called in after the chance discovery of a suspect Mercedes car by an ambulance crew attending an unrelated emergency call at the nearby Tiger Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, near Piccadilly Circus. As many as 1,700 people are believed to have been in the club before the discovery of the bomb at 1.30am yesterday.
With clubs and other venues closing between 2am and 3am the surrounding streets were also busy.
The head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorism command, deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke, said: "It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life."
Mr Clarke confirmed last night that the second car bomb had been uncovered after investigation of a blue Mercedes car which had been served a parking ticket in a street running between Haymarket and Trafalgar Square, and subsequently taken to the Park Lane car pound.
Staff at the pound who had heard about the Haymarket car bomb became suspicious when they noticed a strong smell of petrol from the vehicle. They alerted police who found the bomb-making materials packed inside it.
Mr Clarke said the two vehicles were "clearly linked", adding that this was "obviously troubling".
There was no advance intelligence warning about the planned attacks, which coincided with the appointment of Gordon Brown's new cabinet and come in the run-up to the anniversary of the 7/7 London bombings.
While Mr Clarke said it was too soon to know who might have been responsible, security sources were working on the assumption of an "international" dimension to the attempted car bombings which Mr Clarke confirmed "resonated" with previous terrorist plots.
"The threat from terrorism is real. It is here, enduring. Life must go on but we must all stay alert," he said.
That was the message, too, from prime minister Gordon Brown and newly-appointed home secretary Jacqui Smith, who presided over a meeting of the cabinet's emergency Cobra committee on her first full day in office.
Speaking after a meeting with Mr Brown, the home secretary said: "We are currently facing the most severe and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism." She continued: "While we can minimise the risks we can never completely eliminate them. But as the prime minister has made clear, the government, the police and the security services are doing everything possible to protect the public."
Scotland Yard declined to comment on speculation that a mobile phone found in the first Mercedes had been the device to trigger an explosion averted by an officer disconnecting it before the bomb squad arrived at the scene.
Mr Clarke told a press conference that the explosives officers had manually disabled a viable means of detonating the gas and fuel in the car.
He said: "I think it would be right to pay tribute to the courage and skill of the explosives officers, who manually disabled the device." In doing so not only did their action prevent damage and injury to property, "but has given us opportunities to gather a great deal of forensic and other evidence from the vehicle."