'Simple, homemade bombs used'
2005-07-09 09:40
Beth Gardiner
London - The 4.5kg bombs that destroyed three London Underground carriages and a double-decker bus were likely crude homemade devices set off with a simple timer, an explosives expert said.
The bombs were probably made from simple, relatively easy to obtain plastic explosives, not the higher-grade military plastics like Semtex, which would have killed far more people, Andy Oppenheimer, a weapons expert who consults for Jane's Information Group, said on Friday.
"Any crook with ready cash could obtain this stuff if they knew where to look for it," said Alex Standish, the editor of Jane's Intelligence Digest.
Plastic explosives are readily available on the black market and other central and eastern European countries.
Police said the four bombs that hit the London transportation network on Thursday weighed less than 4.5kg each, small enough to be carried in a backpack. They were left on the floor of the Tube trains and either a seat or the floor of the No 30 bus that was ripped apart in the Bloomsbury neighbourhood, said Assistant Police Commissioner Andy Hayman.
Bus bomber may have blundered
Hayman said the investigation has been hindered by the inaccessibility of one of the wrecked trains, 21.3m below street level, he said.
Bodies are still trapped in the mangled Picadilly line train between King's Cross and Russell Square stations.
Rescuers got all the survivors out in the hours after the blast but decided not to go back to remove the dead or recover evidence until they can shore up the tunnel, which sustained structural damage and may be unsafe, said Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police.
Oppenheimer said the bombers likely used a fairly basic timer which would have been set a half hour or less in advance.
Some believe the bomber on the double-decker bus may have blundered, blowing up the wrong target and accidentally killing himself.
"Everybody is standing face-to-face and this guy kept dipping into this bag," Richard Jones, 61, of Berkshire, west of London, told the British Broadcasting Corporation.
"Al-Qaeda is now an ideology, it's moved beyond being a structural organisation," he said. "All one has to do to form an al-Qaeda cell is to get together with a group of like-minded individuals and say 'We are going to start an al-Qaeda cell.' ... If one is prepared to carry out an attack in the name of al-Qaeda, one becomes an al-Qaeda operative."
He said the bombers' choice of targets reflected a lack of knowledge about the mechanics of explosions that suggests they were not highly trained or experienced.
Bombing a tightly enclosed space like an Underground train is likely to kill fewer people than targeting a more open space where debris can fly through the air and devastate a wider area, he said. In a crowded tube train, the primary force of a blast is likely to be absorbed by a small number of people around the explosion and by the train itself, he said.
- AP