BBC says `toxic cloud' plot foiled

LONDON -- Intelligence agents in Britain and the United States foiled an alleged plot by Islamic militants to detonate a bomb laced with a deadly chemical that could have caused a "toxic cloud" and incurred widespread civilian casualties, a British official said yesterday. The plot was thwarted after US and British intelligence intercepted communications between the conspirators in the early phase of planning, before they obtained the highly toxic chemical known as osmium tetroxide, said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, confirming a report first aired earlier yesterday by the British Broadcasting Corporation.

Osmium tetroxide in its gas form could be lethal in a contained area, such as a subway station or airport, by causing asthma-like attacks described by scientists as "dry-land drowning."

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police, or Scotland Yard, said the agency would not comment on the specifics of the case. But the story, which was picked up by all of Britain's leading newspapers in today's editions, was the latest scare across Europe in a continent increasingly on edge.

Senior counterterrorism officials in European capitals have been on a heightened state of alert since the Madrid bombings March 11, and terrorism analysts say Europe appears to be in the cross hairs of a diffuse but determined enemy. That enemy, the officials and analysts say, is composed of different offshoots of militant Islamic organizations and factions that have taken up Osama bin Laden's broad call for jihad, or holy war, against the West, without necessarily having any direct financial or organizational link to Al Qaeda.

The report of the possible chemical attack in London came after several police raids on suspected militant Islamic groups across Europe, in what analysts say is an attempt to disrupt their organizations before they can strike.

On Monday, French police launched a series of dawn raids in working-class suburbs of Paris, detaining 13 people with purported links to the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group, which investigators believe organized the May 2003 Casablanca bombings and may have also been behind the Madrid train bombings.

The same day, Spanish authorities detained another suspect in the Madrid attacks, bringing to 16 the number of suspects in custody in those bombings.

On Saturday, the Spanish newspaper ABC reported receiving a faxed letter, handwritten in Arabic, signed "Abu Dajuna Al Afgani, Ansar Group, al-Qaida in Europe."

The letter demanded that Spain remove troops from Afghanistan and Iraq by the next day, warning that "if these demands are not met, we will declare war on you and convert your country into an inferno and your blood will flow like rivers."

Later on Saturday, at least four suspected organizers of the March 11 attacks blew themselves up in Leganes, a suburb of the Spanish capital, as officers surrounded their apartment building. A police officer was also killed in the raid. Investigators reportedly found 22 pounds of dynamite and 200 detonators in the wreckage of the apartment.

On March 30, eight British citizens of Pakistani origin were arrested in a massive dawn raid by 700 police officers on addresses scattered across west London and outlying towns.

During that raid, police seized a half-ton of ammonium nitrate fertilizer from a storage facility linked to one of the suspects.

The fertilizer, when mixed with fuel, has been used to make crude but deadly terrorist bombs, such as the one used in the 1995 Oklahoma City attack and the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

A report yesterday by ABC News linked the eight suspects arrested in the British raids to the alleged plot to carry out a chemical attack. The report said that investigators had been conducting surveillance on the group for several months, but moved in when communications indicated they were attempting to obtain the osmium tetroxide. The BBC report did not report any such link.

The ABC News report also quoted Dave Siegrist, a bioterrorism specialist at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies in Arlington, Va , saying that osmium tetroxide is a "nasty piece of work."

"It irritates the eyes, lungs, nose, and throat. It leads to an asthma-like death, what we call a `dry-land drowning,' " Siegrist added.

The March 11 bombings in Madrid made horribly apparent the vulnerability of Europe as a terrorist target. And although the United States continues to be the primary target for Al Qaeda and the groups it inspires, it has become clear in the weeks since the Spanish bombings that European security forces are being forced to confront the reality of such attacks on their soil. Although some European countries have developed expertise in long struggles against such terrorist insurgencies as the Irish Republican Army and the Basque separatist group ETA, the continent as a whole is not prepared to respond to the threat posed by Al Qaeda, some say.

Daniel Keohane, a defense analyst at the Center for European Reform in London, says Europe is clearly the current focus of Islamic terrorist groups. And Europe's vulnerability to attack has been highlighted as a result. Such vulnerability includes, according to Keohane:

Europe's proximity to "a number of countries where Al Qaeda operates," from North Africa to the Middle East.

The failure of European countries to "share intelligence at the EU level."

And the fact that EU citizens can now move passport-free among other EU countries, while security forces and courts have no jurisdiction beyond the borders of their particular country.

In the immediate aftermath of the Madrid bombings, EU interior and justice ministers met and appointed top counterterrorism officials to help coordinate efforts.