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'Bomb' found outside butcher's
Anti-terrorist officers are investigating a homemade bomb found outside a butcher's shop.
The improvised explosive device was found by a member of staff at Taylors Butchers in Essex, UK on Thursday.
A spokesman for Scotland Yard said it appeared that someone had tried unsuccessfully to detonate it.
He added the motive is as yet unknown, but the incident is not being linked to international or dissident Irish Republican terrorism.
It is being investigated by the Anti-Terrorist Branch.
Police have now taken away CCTV footage from the area for examination.
27 Feb, 2003
Saudis arrest McDonald's bomb suspect
Saudi authorities have arrested a man accused of attempting to firebomb a McDonald's restaurant, according to local media reports.
The unidentified man is said to have thrown a plastic bottle filled with flammable liquid, which was not lit, at the fast-food outlet in the eastern city of Dammam, al-Watan newspaper reported.
Employees called the police after noticing the firebomb, which did not cause any injuries or damage. The suspect was arrested following statements from workers and other witnesses, the AFP news agency said.
The attack was the second on a McDonald's restaurant - an American chain - in the past few months.
It also comes amid growing anti-American sentiment in Saudi Arabia - traditionally a strong US ally - as the prospect of conflict in Iraq draws closer.
In November last year a McDonald's restaurant in Al-Kharj, south east of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, was set alight and destroyed by an attacker.
And last week a British man was shot dead by an assailant in a vehicle as he sat in his car at traffic lights in Riyadh.
The US embassy said preliminary investigations indicated the killing of 37-year-old Robert Dent was a terrorist act directed against Westerners in the kingdom.
The alleged killer has been named by Saudi authorities as Saud bin Ali bin Nasser, 30, a Saudi of Yemeni origin who worked for a car dealership.
Both the US and UK embassies in Saudi Arabia have warned their nationals to be vigilant in the country.
26 Feb, 2003
Bomb scare diverts UK-bound jet
A bomb scare which forced a London-bound Qatar Airways plane to make an emergency landing in Syria has turned out to be a false alarm.
Qatar Airways described the scare as a "hoax" after the plane carrying some 250 passengers had landed in Damascus.
A woman of European origin who raised the alarm is to remain in the Syrian capital for questioning, but the other passengers are expected to travel on to London on the same plane.
The scare came amid heightened tension throughout the Gulf, where Britain and the United States have been massing troops and military equipment ahead of a possible attack on Iraq.
The passengers on board the Airbus A330-200 were taken off the plane while Syrian police searched for a device, but nothing was found.
Flight QR001 from the Qatari capital, Doha, to London Heathrow is due to continue shortly, the airline said.
The incident was the second involving a Qatar Airways plane this weekend.
A second airliner was delayed in Cairo after a hoax message containing a bomb threat was found aboard.
Qatar Airways said that none of the passengers or crew in Damascus had been harmed and the plane had been thoroughly searched.
"A female passenger of European origin is being questioned by the Syrian authorities," it said in its statement.
The Qatari ambassador to Syria, Abdullah al-Hamr, said it was unclear what had caused the scare.
"We don't know what prompted the passenger to say this," he said.
"However, Qatar Airways took the appropriate measures to safeguard the flight and asked the plane to land... All the passengers are fine. The situation is reassuring."
In the Cairo scare, cleaners found a note purporting to be from the al-Qaeda network, saying "the plane will blow up on take-off".
The plane's 147 passengers were delayed more than two and a half hours awaiting departure.
London also recently beefed up security at major UK airports amid a terror scare.
22 Feb, 2003
Bullet sent in Valentine's Card to Sinn Fein Councillor
A Sinn Fein councillor has been sent a bullet taped inside a Valentine card.
The threat to Paul Butler, a party member of Lisburn Council, County Antrim, has been made a fortnight after he moved to a new home.
He says police were given his address when he applied to be included in a protection scheme because of fears for his safety.
Meanwhile, police have confirmed a number of people in the greater Belfast area have been warned their names and addresses are in the hands of loyalist paramilitaries.
Ulster Defence Association death threats have also been issued against three postal staff.
The alert in the greater Belfast area has been linked to the recovery of a computer disk in Carrickfergus, County Antrim, at the height of last month's feud involving rival UDA factions.
A police spokeswoman said: "A number of people have been advised over the past two weeks to take steps to review their security arrangements."
14 Feb 2003, Annanova
Blast rocks Pakistan State Oil HQ
A powerful explosion has rocked Pakistan's southern port of Karachi, killing at least one person and injuring two slightly.
A bomb, apparently hidden on a motorcycle, exploded near the headquarters of Pakistan State Oil, shattering windows.
"We are investigating and trying to determine who was behind this bomb explosion," said deputy police chief Tariq Jamil.
Sindh province's inspector-general of police, Syed Kamal, said a foreign group could be to blame for the blast, but it would be premature to point the finger at al-Qaeda.
"We cannot rule out foreign hand in the blast," he said.
He identified the dead man as Pujabi Karim Dad. One of the injured was a policeman, the inspector-general said.
Police and paramilitary units have set up road blocks in surrounding streets.
3 Feb 2003, BBC
Evacuation after security alert
Nearly 200
guests were evacuated from a Manchester hotel after a suspect package
was found on Sunday.
Police wearing decontamination suits threw up a 200-metre cordon
around the Novotel in the city centre.
Emergency crews were alerted at 0516 GMT after the discovery on the fourth floor of the hotel on Portland Street and a subsequent phone call.
Bomb disposal experts, who x-rayed the package, later confirmed it was not an explosive device.
Greater Manchester Police confirmed officers wore decontamination suits "as a precaution".
A total of 180 guests at the Novotel were moved to another building after the package was found during a routine security check.
Road closures were later lifted at 1430 GMT, apart from Dickinson Street, which remained closed.
The Novotel, where investigations were continuing, also remained closed.
A police spokesman told BBC GMR: "The package is still in place and we're doing everything we can to resolve this situation as soon as possible.
"It is too early to speculate about the nature of the package until our investigations are complete."
Hundreds of people who converged on the city to celebrate Chinese new year on Sunday afternoon experienced traffic delays, but the festival itself was unaffected.
2 Feb, 2003, BBC
Eighteen hurt in Philippines blast
A bomb has exploded in the southern Philippines, injuring at least 18 people.
Police in Kidapawan city, a largely Christian town on the island of Mindanao, said the bomb was placed in front of a three-storey commercial complex.
Several of those hurt were caught in a huge fire that the bomb sparked in the office block.
The incident
is the latest in a series of bomb attacks in the south of the country.
In October 2002, a bomb at a bus station in Kidapawan city killed
seven people and injured 24 others.
Tuesday's bomb went off at around 1300 local time as police worked to defuse it. One police officer reportedly lost his hand as a result.
"It was a powerful blast," police chief Casimiro Medes told the Associated Press news agency. "We still don't know if it was a grenade or a mortar, but the explosive had shrapnel."
Police said that witnesses saw three men plant the bomb outside the building, hidden in a plastic bag.
The governor of North Cotaboto province, Emmanuel Pinol, said he believed a regional Muslim extremist group may have been responsible.
"It is possible that this is the work of elements linked to the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)," Emmanuel Pinol told Reuters news agency.
The MILF has been linked to several attacks in the area, including a blast in the southern town of Datu Piang which killed at least 13 people in December.
The group, which operates on central Mindanao island, has signed a ceasefire with the government and peace talks are expected to resume in Malaysia next month,
The southern Philippines has been a scene of separatist conflict for 30 years, led by Muslim rebels in the predominantly Catholic country.
28 Jan, 2003, BBC
Parcel bomb defused at prisons HQ
A bomb has been defused at the headquarters of the Northern Ireland Prison Service.
The device was discovered at Dundonald House in the Stormont estate in east Belfast on Thursday.
It was concealed in a package and was designed to injure whoever opened it, said a police spokesman.
He said the bomb had the potential to cause serious injury and that detectives were keeping an open mind about who was responsible.
The Army also took away a number of other items for forensic examination.
The police described the device as "crude".
A Prison Service spokesman said: "This type of indiscriminate attack - which places the lives of anyone handling such a package at risk from serious injury or worse - is to be utterly condemned."
23 January 2003
'Bomb' kills Sri Lanka children
At least six people, five of them children, have been killed in Sri Lanka after they tried to open a suspected parcel bomb, police say.
The incident happened in the village of Eppawala, about 150 kilometres (95 miles) north-east of the capital, Colombo.
Police are still investigating but it seems a booby-trapped parcel was left over from the country's civil war.
The incident is one of the worst of its kind and highlights the problem of unexploded ordnance and landmines which litter the north-east of the country.
The school children found the parcel in Eppawala-Kattattiya in the North Central Province near the town of Anuradhapura - an area which has always been under government control but which is close to the conflict zone.
The children took the parcel to a relative to open and it exploded inside his house.
15 January 2003, BBC
Restaurant bomb defused in Pakistan
Police in Pakistan say they have foiled an attempt to blow up an American fast-food restaurant in the southern city of Hyderabad.
Police say the bomb, which was planted in a Kentucky Fried Chicken toilet, was defused just before it was due to explode.
Officials said an investigation was underway but no arrests had been made.
There have been a series of attacks against foreign interests in Pakistan since American-led coalition forces invaded neighbouring Afghanistan over a year ago.
These have usually been blamed on Islamic militants.
12 Jan 2003, BBC
Canadian Anthrax Scare Proves False
Powder contained in letters addressed to Canada's controversial firearms registry tested negative for anthrax early on Friday after a scare that sent two postal workers to hospital for examinations, police said.
The employees discovered what police and fire officials initially determined as possible anthrax late on Thursday at a sorting outlet in west Edmonton, Alberta.
But subsequent testing proved the substance in two letters did not contain the potentially lethal spores, Edmonton Police Sgt. Dan Doerksen said.
"We're checking other packages, but we're treating everything now as a hoax," he said.
Anthrax scares dominated headlines in the United States and other parts of the world in the weeks following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, when anthrax-laced letters were mailed to US media and politicians. In the United States, five people died from inhalational anthrax, 18 others were infected.
3 Jan, 2003, Reuters
Police seek suspect in southern Philippines bomb attack that killed at least 10
Police were searching Wednesday for a man who tossed a grenade into a roadside stall selling firecrackers in the southern Philippines, killing at least 10 New Year's revelers and injuring 32 others.
A 14-year-old boy was among those killed in the city of Tacurong in Sultan Kudarat province on southern Mindanao island, police spokesman Leopoldo Bataoil said.
Police were searching for a man seen lobbing the grenade, he said, and police artists were compiling a sketch of the suspect.
"We're still ascertaining the motive behind the grenade attack," he said.
No one has claimed responsibility, but authorities have blamed the separatist Moro Islamic Liberation Front for a series of bomb attacks and an ambush that have killed 30 people and injured dozens in the southern Philippines in the last two weeks.
The rebels, who have been fighting for three decades for Muslim self-rule in the region, have denied the charge.
Witnesses said about 50 customers were at the stall buying firecrackers when the blast occurred around 9 p.m. (1300 GMT) at the city's busy square. Four people died instantly, including the 14-year-old, army Capt. Onting Alon said.
It was the fifth bombing in central Mindanao since Christmas Eve, when a homemade bomb killed the mayor of Datu Piang town and 16 others. Police said the MILF was behind that attack.
Tacurong is a mainly Christian agricultural city at the heart of Sultan Kudarat, next to Maguindanao province, where the MILF has many bases.
The city has had many grenade attacks in the past, blamed on MILF members from the provincial rural interior.
Communist New People's Army rebels also have a presence in Tacurong, but they are not known to have staged attacks similar to Tuesday's.
The military and the MILF rebels have accused each other of violating a shaky 1997 truce. Peace negotiations between the MILF and government were suspended in October 2001, but are expected to resume later this month in Malaysia.
1 Jan, 2003, AP
