A four-wheel-drive vehicle crashed into the main terminal at Glasgow airport on Saturday and exploded in flames, a day after police foiled a possible al Qaeda plot to detonate two car bombs in central London. A Glasgow police spokeswoman said there were no immediate reports of any injuries and said the blaze was under control.
Witnesses told the BBC that the vehicle, a Land Rover or a Jeep Cherokee, had exploded shortly after crashing into the glass front doors of the terminal, and said there was a heavy stench of petrol. "It raced across the central reservation and went straight into the building," said taxi driver Ian Crosby outside the terminal.
Crosby said a stocky Asian man had got out of the car and was quickly wrestled to the ground by bystanders. "It would appear to me to have been a deliberate attack. I think this was a terrorist attack," Crosby said. In London, police scoured hours of CCTV footage and extra squads were deployed on the streets, particularly around landmarks such as the Houses of Parliament after Friday's failed car bomb attacks in the centre of the city.
However, tourists and Londoners appeared largely unperturbed, going about their business as usual. An intensive counter-terrorism investigation was launched after the discovery in the early hours of Friday of a metallic green Mercedes packed with up to 60 litres of fuel, several gas canisters and a large quantity of nails.
The vehicle was parked outside the Tiger night club in the busy theatreland district of London, and aroused suspicion only after ambulance workers, treating someone else, thought they had noticed smoke inside the vehicle. A mobile phone, which security experts believed might have been a detonation device, was left inside the fume-filled car.
A second Mercedes packed with gas and nails was later found to have been parked just a few hundred yards from the first. Police said the two vehicles were clearly linked. Both bombs were quickly defused but, had they gone off, would have caused significant injuries and deaths, police said.