Brits fear Madrid-style attack

2004-03-15 20:48

London - Sitting by her jewellery stall at one of London's busiest railway stations, Mary Doyle was convinced Britain's capital would suffer an attack on the scale of last week's bomb blasts in Madrid.

"It's going to happen, no doubt about it. It's not if, it's when," she said at Charing Cross Station.

Around the corner, at the Embankment subway station, Andy Trotter, deputy chief of the British Transport Police, was unveiling a campaign to step up vigilance on the London Underground.

"Those awful events in Madrid underline just how serious this is and how important it is that we work together," Trotter said.

"We are trying to employ the eyes and ears of the three million passengers that use the network," he said.

In the wake of the Madrid atrocities, which saw 200 people killed in bomb blasts on four rush-hour trains last Thursday, police announced that plainclothes anti-terrorist officers would begin to patrol the Underground.

Police said the unprecedented measure was decided before the Madrid blasts - but in any event, commuters welcomed it.

"It is a good thing," said Charlie Stones, 20, as he waited for a delayed subway train on a packed platform at Waterloo station.

Asked what he thought of police plans to "stop and search" passengers as part of the stricter security measures announced by Trotter, Stones said: "They are only doing their job. I wouldn't mind if they stopped me."

Trotter said on Monday that police would need to be diverted from other duties as part of the stepped-up security, but he would not be drawn on how many of his specialised force's 2 200 officers would partake in the new operation.

While plans were underway to use undercover officers, passengers at Waterloo railway station waiting to board a Eurostar train to Paris were concerned by an absence of uniformed police.

"We just saw the first policeman," said Samantha Friar, 30, an hour after she arrived at the station.

"I am hoping today that my bag gets checked and checked and checked, and that everybody's bag gets checked and checked and checked," she said.

Her husband, Scott, thought it unlikely that terrorists would target a Eurostar train or try to carry out an explosion in the Channel Tunnel that links Britain and France.

"I can't see the French being bombed because France wasn't in the Iraq war," he said, whereas Spain and in particular Britain were allies of the United States in the conflict to oust Saddam Hussein.

Spanish officials initially blamed the Basque separatist group ETA for the Madrid bombings, which preceded Spain's general election on Sunday.

Fears abound, however, that the al-Qaeda network was in fact responsible after a video was found over the weekend in which a man speaking Arabic claimed the attacks in the name of the group.

- AFP