Soccer Suicide Carnage Averted

[DBAHO]

A GROUP of 10 terror suspects arrested in Britain overnight were planning an attack on Manchester United's stadium during this weekend's blockbuster against Liverpool, according to reports.

 

Reports from the The Sun newspaper claim arrests made overnight by Greater Manchester Police had almost certainly foiled a suicide bombing attack at Old Trafford, Britain's biggest sporting stadium, which holds 67,721 people.

 

Intelligence chiefs said several al-Qaeda extremists had planned to blow themselves up in separate parts of the ground during the match and had already bought tickets for the sell-out match.

 

"If successful, any such attack would have caused absolute carnage. Thousands of people could have been killed," a police source said.

 

Some of soccer's most expensive names, including Australia's Liverpool star Harry Kewell, are scheduled to play the match.

 

England's Michael Owen, Steven Gerrard, Wes Brown and Emile Heskey are also due to play, so too other international stars such as Ruud van Nistelrooy, Luis Saha, Cristiano Ronaldo, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs.

 

The Sun's sister broadsheet newspaper The Times reported that security services were believed to have mounted electronic surveillance which suggested a possible attack aimed at a "large gathering of people".

 

A spokesman for the Home Office refused to comment on the reports, but said: "We have always said that we would not hesitate to issue a warning if it is the best to protect the public in respect of a specific and credible threat.

 

"Advice would be issued immediately if the public needed to take specific action which could make them safer."

 

The arrests overnight continued a crackdown by British police on terrorist suspects. Seven of the latest suspects were arrested in the Manchester area and included one woman. The others were detained in Staffordshire, South Yorkshire and the West Midlands.

 

Those held were described as being of North African and Iraqi Kurdish descent and were detained under the Terrorism Act passed in 2000 on suspicion of the "commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism", police said.

 

Dave Whatton, Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, said the co-ordinated raids - which involved more than 400 officers - were part of an ongoing operation related to terrorist threats.

 

"This is the first action that the (local) public have become aware of, as it is overt, but nothing should be read into that," he said. He added that the suspects would be questioned "as part of the ongoing inquiry".

 

 

On March 30 this year, a similar police swoop in London and its surrounding areas collected nine people under the Terrorism Act and uncovered seized a large quantity of ammonium nitrate fertiliser - a popular bomb-making ingredient.

 

Those raids were the biggest in Britain since the discovery in January 2003 of traces of the deadly poison ricin in a north London apartment.

 

Four police forces - Greater Manchester, West Midlands, South Yorkshire and Staffordshire - participated in last night's operation.

 

Witnesses said one of the raids targeted a flat - occupied by a single man for about a year - situated above a kebab shop owned by Iraqi Kurds on Upper Brook Street near the centre of Manchester.

 

"I asked the police what had happened but they gave me no information," Imad Alsabbagh, the 46-year-old owner of a Syrian restaurant next door, said.

 

Britain's most senior police officer, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, warned of the “inevitability” of a terrorist attack in London after the March 11 train bombings in Madrid which killed 191 people.

 

Similar fears were expressed by Manchester's police chief Michael Todd, who last week said "the threat is high", the Manchester Evening News reported.

 

During the weekend, the leader of a militant Islamic group told a Portuguese newspaper that sympathisers of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terror network were preparing large-scale attacks in London.

 

Omar Bakri Mohammed, part of a London-based group known as al-Muhajiroun, told Publico that "a very well-organised group which calls itself al-Qaeda Europe" was "on the verge of launching a big operation".

 

Six of the nine men arrested on March 30 appeared in a London court last week accused of being involved in a plot to build a bomb, while the other three were released on bail.

 

A 10th man was apprehended a day earlier in the Canadian capital Ottawa in relation to the same alleged conspiracy.

[southsider2k5]

[Queen Prawn]

[The Critic]

:knob

[NUKE_CLEVELAND]

Bunch of savages. How's 'bout 10 bullets in 10 heads.

[ChiSox_Sonix]

Harry Kewell? BAH! Australia doesnt have any good players

[southsider2k5]

They reported these arrests in the Trib, but they said the potential target was though to be a mall.