Airport terminal shut after scare

Published on Saturday 23 January 2010 18:18

REPORTS of Islamic terrorists training female suicide bombers to attack Western targets have surfaced just hours after the government increased the UK's security alert rating to "severe".

• An armed policeman stands guard in Downing Street yesterday after the terror threat was raised from 'substantial' to severe, suggesting an attack is 'highly likely'. Photograph: Getty Images

The Home Office could not confirm last night suggestions that the heightened alert level was linked to reports that al Qaida terrorist cells had trained women to carry out suicide bomb attacks.

Earlier, Manchester Airport reopened after being evacutated when a passenger was discovered in possession of a white powder. The substance was eventually confirmed as harmless but highlighted the increased caution since the terror threat was raised.

The evacuation came as police and other security agencies moved to their highest level of alert since last summer, tightening security at airports and other obvious targets and keeping a closer watch on suspect terror sympathisers.

The new official "severe" warning was issued as final preparations were made to welcome Afghan president Hamid Karzai and other world leaders for a conference on the future of Afghanistan.

Professor Anthony Glees, who heads the Buckingham University Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, firmly linked the heightened alert to the Afghan summit.

He said: "I think it's very probable that people, either members of al-Qaeda or associated to al-Qaeda, will be figuring that it would be a huge trophy attack in some way to damage the holding of the Afghanistan conference."

Other experts said intelligence chiefs may have been hearing worrying chatter online about potential attacks and may also have been worried about a repeat of the attempt by a Nigerian radical to blow up a plane over Detroit on Christmas Day.

The suggestion of female suicide bombers emerged from Richard Clarke, a former chief White House counter-terrorism adviser.

He said: "They have trained women. There are other that are others who are still out there and who have been trained and who are clean skins – that means people who we do not have a record of, people who may not look like al Qaida terrorists, who may not be Arabs and may not be men."

Whitehall sources could not confirm the reports last night, and earlier home secretary Alan Johnson said: "The fact that we've moved to another threat level means we put more resources in, we heighten the state of vigilance. It shouldn't be thought to be linked to Detroit, or anywhere else for that matter."

The threat levels are set by the government's Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre. The body does not publish reasons for its warnings.

At Manchester Airport,

it is understood the substance was discovered in the bag of an Asian man. The police said the passenger had not been arrested and was helping them with their inquiries.

Police said check-in and security screening areas at the airport's Terminal 3 were evacuated as a precaution – with the rest of the airport allowed to continue operating as normal.

An Explosive Ordinance Device Team attended as a chemical incident was declared but eventually found no evidence that the white power could have been used as a detonator.

Britain has lived with a "severe" threat for months at a time in recent years. The threat level is second only to "critical", the level when an attack is deemed imminent. That level has been publicly declared twice before: after the plot to blow up transatlantic airliners was exposed in 2006 and after the Glasgow Airport bombing in 2007.

The Afghanistan conference, however, presents a major security headache for UK authorities, as well as historic opportunities to tackle militancy in the country. Apart from Karzai, guests at the conference, which begins on Thursday, will include UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Nato Secretary-General Anders Fogh Rasmussen and foreign ministers from 50 countries.

The summit was called by Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who hopes to see progress in developing a timetable for transferring control of parts of Afghanistan from allied to local control.

The Afghanistan conference will be preceded by a meeting on tackling Islamist violence in another country, Yemen, on the Arabian Peninsula.

Last week Brown announced that Britain was suspending flights into the country by a Yemeni airline and was stepping up immigration checks in the wake of the failed Detroit attack.

Brown said: "We know that a number of terrorist cells are actively trying to attack Britain and other countries."

It is thought that the alleged terrorist in the Detroit plot had been trained in Yemen.

Britain's threat level had been officially at "substantial" since the summer of 2009, meaning an attack was a strong possibility.

Terror experts said that heightened security would be hard to detect. Professor Paul Wilkinson, of the University of St Andrews, said: "I think it's not something that the public will notice very much, in terms of everyday life."

Scottish justice secretary Kenny MacAskill said: "Scottish ministers have been fully briefed on the situation, and the Scottish Government will continue to work closely with the Home Office, the police and other relevant agencies.

"Although we have no reason to believe that this threat increase relates to Scotland specifically, I would urge the public to remain extremely vigilant and report anything suspicious to the police immediately."