Glasgow Airport Car Crash `Treated As a Terrorist Incident'

Jun 30, 08:50 PM

Current Headlines: LONDON _ The day after police defused two car bombs in the heart of London, two men in a flaming Jeep Cherokee smashed into the main terminal at Glasgow Airport on Saturday.

In what now appears to have been an unsuccessful terror attack, the sport-utility vehicle sped along the service road in front of the terminal before swerving sharply into main entrance. The vehicle apparently burst into flames on impact, but there were no serious injuries except for one of the men in the vehicle whose clothing caught fire.

The two have been arrested, and Scottish police say they are treating it as terrorist incident with possible links to the London car-bomb plot.

"There are clearly similarities, and we can confirm that this is being treated as a terrorist incident," said Strathclyde Police Chief Constable Willie Rae.

After an emergency meeting of senior government officials, Britain's national terrorism threat level was raised to its highest level for the first time since an alleged plot to blow up trans-Atlantic airliners was discovered last August. Security also was tightened at major airports in the U.S., but the national terror alert level was not raised.

In Chicago, security was beefed up at O'Hare and Midway airports, with increased random inspections of vehicles as well as added canine units and officers, according to the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications. Passengers were advised to allow extra time.

Several witnesses at the busy Glasgow Airport said the Jeep already was on fire when it crashed into the terminal. They also said that one of the men appeared to be dousing himself and the vehicle with gasoline.

It is unclear whether this was the same man whose clothing caught fire, but witnesses, quoted on British television, said an airport official put out the flames with a fire extinguisher.

The man then scuffled with airport authorities and tried to flee before he was subdued, according to witness Ally Robertson, who spoke to Britain's Sky News.

Jackie Kennedy, a beautician from Glasgow, said she saw one of the men in the car douse himself with gasoline and set himself alight.

"He had a big smirk on his face. He lifted up what appeared to be a five-liter drum, which I think had petrol in it, and set himself on fire. His clothes were melting in front of my very eyes," she told The Times newspaper of London.

"The police tried to pounce on him, but he fought back and was struggling with them. It was only when a member of the public punched him in the face that the police managed to restrain him," she said.

Scottish police later confirmed that the man was wearing a "suspect device" believed to be an explosive suicide belt.

Police have not yet released the names of the two men who were arrested, but several witnesses described both as Asian, a characterization that Britons commonly use for people from the Indian subcontinent.

Several bystanders captured parts of the bizarre scene on mobile phone cameras.

The airport, Scotland's busiest, was closed, and all flights were canceled.

In London, meanwhile, counterterrorism police where trawling through closed-circuit television surveillance footage for clues to who may have been responsible for the unsuccessful car bomb attack in central London.

Two Mercedes sedans packed with nails and canisters of propane gas were parked within a few blocks of each other in central London's busy entertainment district early Friday morning.

One of the cars, parked outside a crowded nightclub, aroused the suspicion of an ambulance crew. Police were called, and the bomb squad dismantled the detonator.

About the same time, the second car was being ticketed for illegal parking and towed to an underground garage. Garage attendants noticed a strong smell of gasoline coming from the car and alerted police.

If either had exploded, the result would have been "significant injury or loss of life," said Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist unit. The number of casualties "certainly could have been into the hundreds," he said.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing a crisis after only four days in office, praised the police for their professionalism.

"The first duty of the government is the security and safety of all the British people, so it is right to raise the level of security at airports and in crowded places in light of the heightened threat," he said in a televised statement.

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