Brits: Chemical bomb planned
2004-04-06 15:01
Washington - British authorities believe terror suspects arrested last week planned to make a bomb with a highly toxic chemical called osmium tetroxide, ABC News reported.
The chemical used mainly in research laboratories can attack soft human tissue and could blind or kill anyone who breathed in its fumes, the report said.
"It's a nasty piece of work," Dave Siegrist, a bioterrorism expert at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Virginia, told the US television network. "It irritates the eyes, lungs, nose and throat. It leads to an asthma-like death, what we call a 'dry-land drowning.'"
It was the first time osmium tetroxide has been linked to possible terror use, ABC said. It is sold on internet sites, not unlike many industrial chemicals that could be equally as potent.
US officials say the likelihood of a chemical bomb is much greater than a biological and radiological one. But the United States has still not settled how to tighten restrictions on what are known as toxic industrial chemicals, which are well-known to the al-Qaeda terror network and still easily available, the report added.
Eight men were arrested in raids in London March 30 which apparently foiled a plot to build and detonate a powerful bomb. Scotland Yard has announced the arrest of a ninth person in connection with the operation.
The suspects, aged 17 to 32, are all British citizens reportedly of Pakistani descent. They were taken into custody when 700 police officers raided 24 locations in and around London, also netting a half-ton of ammonium nitrate fertiliser that could be used to make explosives.