Police avert car bomb 'carnage'
A car bomb planted in central London would have caused "carnage" if it had exploded, police sources have said.
A controlled explosion was carried out on the car, packed with 60 litres of petrol, gas cylinders and nails, in Haymarket, near Piccadilly Circus.
"International elements" are believed to be involved with the Haymarket bomb, Whitehall sources told the BBC.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's counter-terrorism command, said: "It is obvious that if the device had detonated there could have been serious injury or loss of life."
The ambulance had been called to the nightclub - where up to 1,700 people were inside - when they spotted smoke, now believed to be vapour, inside the car.
The car bomb has echoes of other terrorist plots. Five men were jailed for life in April for a UK bomb plot linked to al-Qaeda that targeted a shopping centre and a nightclub with a giant fertiliser bomb.
And Dhiren Barot was jailed for life last November for conspiring to park limousines packed with gas canisters underneath high-profile buildings before detonating them.
DAC Clarke told a press conference that it was too early to say who was responsible but the incident "resonated" with previous terrorist plots.
A police source said the bomb was a "big device" and had posed a real and substantial threat to the hundreds of revellers leaving the area's bars and nightclubs.
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