Terror On The Thames
Is al Qaeda--or one of its offshoots--behind the attack on America's closest ally?
When officials in London first began evacuating the entire subway system during the Thursday morning rush hour, riders were told it was because of a massive power failure. If only it were so. The truth--four nearly simultaneous terrorist attacks on the heart of London's mass transit system--was much more devastating. The carcass of a red double-decker bus, with its roof peeled off and flung to the ground, left little doubt that that war on terrorism had landed in the middle of Britain's historic capital city. At least 50 people were killed in the explosions and more than 700 were injured. The blasts shattered what had been a giddy mood in a city still celebrating being awarded the 2012 Olympic Games. On Thursday morning, the London newspapers displayed photographs of revelers at a victory rally in Trafalgar Square; on Friday morning, the front pages showed death and destruction.
For Londoners, who for years endured terrorist attacks by the Irish Republican Army, the carnage still came as a shock. "We knew there was a threat; we've been expecting this, but now that it's happened, it's very scary," says Owain Greille, a Welsh medical student in London. "You can't help but think, it so easily could have been me." It was even more dramatic for occurring amid the heightened security surrounding the Group of Eight summit, which Britain was hosting at a Scottish resort (box, Page 30). Reaction around Europe and in the United States was swift, as city officials moved to tighten security on subway and bus systems. U.S. homeland security officials raised the terror alert level to orange, or high, for America's mass transit systems, underscoring a long-standing concern about their inherent vulnerability to terrorist attack. "We are concerned about this kind of attack being perpetrated in the United States," says a senior homeland security official (box, Page 28).
Clues in the video? The first explosions, on three different subway cars, were only 26 minutes apart. The initial investigation by British police suggested that a surprisingly small amount of explosives was used in each attack--only about 10 pounds, which could fit unobtrusively in a small backpack--but the tunnel walls served to magnify the underground blasts. The tunnel was so badly damaged at one site, near the Russell Square station, that it took rescuers days to recover bodies from the crippled subway car. Pieces of timing devices were also recovered, according to U.S. officials, leading police to conclude that the bombs had been placed on the floors of the subway cars by attackers who probably escaped.
Investigators continue to comb the scenes for any evidence and scour hours of video surveillance footage from London's ubiquitous security cameras. Officials could not immediately identify who was responsible for the attack, but the signature traits--near-simultaneous attacks on symbolic targets calculated to cause maximum casualties--seem familiar. "The attack methodology is consistent with what we know al Qaeda has planned for in the past," says a senior U.S. intelligence official. "There is also intelligence indicating al Qaeda has been trying to carry out attacks in Europe and the homeland just like this one." Shortly after the attack, a previously unknown group calling itself the "Secret Organization of al Qaeda in Europe" claimed responsibility, linking the attack to military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan and threatening other U.S. allies like Denmark and Italy. Officials could not validate the claim, but experts said the language and tone were similar to those of al Qaeda's past communications.
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