Police find two car bombs in central London

By Peter Graff and Mark Trevelyan

LONDON (Reuters) - Police found two car bombs packed with gasoline, propane and nails in London's teeming theater district on Friday, averting attacks that echoed an earlier al Qaeda plot and could have killed or maimed scores of people.

Officers defused the first bomb, found in a green Mercedes parked outside one of London's biggest nightclubs, the cavernous Tiger Tiger, at around 1 a.m. (8 p.m. EDT), when hundreds were packed inside for "Sugar 'n Spice Ladies Night".

The police, alerted by ambulance workers who thought they saw smoke inside the car, defused the first bomb at the scene, saying it contained propane tanks, fuel canisters and nails.

Similar materials were later found in a blue Mercedes that had been parked illegally nearby and towed away. The two cars were "clearly linked" said Peter Clarke, London's anti-terrorism police chief.

"The discovery of what appears to be a second bomb is obviously troubling and reinforces the need for the public to be alert," he said.

Authorities said they did not know who left the bombs but they had begun a counter-terrorism investigation. The alerts came less than two years after Islamist suicide bombers killed 52 commuters on London transport.

"It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been significant injury or loss of life," Clarke said.

He said there were similarities between Friday's incident and an earlier plot, uncovered in 2004, in which an al Qaeda militant planned to detonate propane-fuelled bombs in limousines.

The ringleader of that plot, Dhiren Barot, was convicted last year. Another group of Islamic radicals were convicted this year for a plot in which a big nightclub was among the targets.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing a major challenge two days after succeeding Tony Blair, convened Britain's top security committee, Cobra.

"SERIOUS AND SUSTAINED THREAT"

"We are currently facing the most serious and sustained threat to our security from international terrorism," Jacqui Smith, Brown's new interior minister, said after the meeting, which she chaired in her first day on the job.

A large area around the scene on central London's Haymarket street, near Piccadilly Circus, was sealed off during the day.

The area near the garage where the second car had been taken was also closed for much of the day but was later reopened.

Television pictures showed a gas canister after it had been removed from the first car. It was green and labeled "PATIO GAS", which is readily available at hardware stores in Britain.