July 7th People's Independent Inquiry Forum -> Nature of the Explosions/Explosives

Nature of the Explosions/Explosives, Power surges? High explosives? Timers?

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The Antagonist

Posted: Mar 20 2006, 12:18 PM

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Advanced bombs with timers?

QUOTE

Advanced bombs were so powerful that none of dead have been identified

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Monday, July 11, 2005

LONDON � Al Qaida employed light but advanced bombs detonated by timers in last week's bloody strike on London's mass transit system.

Officials said the bombs were so powerful that none of the 49 known dead had been identified over the weekend. They said the four bombs were detonated within 50 seconds. (four bombs?)

British officials said authorities have determined that the four bombs that blew up in subways and a bus in London on July 7 were composed of less than 4.5 kilograms of explosives each. They said the bombs were small enough to fit in a knapsack and were detonated by timers rather than suicide attackers.

[On late Saturday, British authorities evacuated the downtown section of Birmingham amid an alert of an impending insurgency attack, Middle East Newsline reported. The evacuation took place amid a jazz festival attended by tens of thousands of people.]

"All we are saying is that it is high explosives," Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Brian Paddick told a news conference on Saturday.

"That would tend to suggest that it is not home-made explosive. Whether it is military explosive, whether it is commercial explosive, whether it is plastic explosive we do not want to say at this stage."

At least 49 people were killed and another 700 were injured in the London bombings, but officials said they expected the casualty toll to rise.

On Saturday, a second Al Qaida group, entitled Abu Hafs Al Masri Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

"It would appear now that all three bombs on the London Underground system actually exploded within seconds of each other," Paddick said. "In fact, the three bombs exploded almost simultaneously."

Officials said the bombs were placed on the floor of three subway cars.

The fourth bomb was placed either on the floor or on a seat of a double-decker bus.

"Initially, the forensic investigation suggests that each device used had less than 10 pounds of high explosives," Assistant Police Commissioner Andy Hayman said.

Officials said the bombs were much smaller than those used in Islamic insurgency attacks in Egypt, Iraq and Israel. Many of those attacks were conducted by suicide operatives with bombs of 10 or more kilograms.

British authorities have sought to question Mohammed Garbazi, a cleric sentenced by a Moroccan court to 20 years on charges of being linked to Al Qaida suicide attacks in Casablanca in which 45 people were killed in 2003.

Garbazi was also suspected of being connected to the Madrid train bombings in March 2004.

Officials said they could not rule out the prospect that cellular phones were used to detonate the London bombings. Cell phones were used to explode the bombs in Madrid.

"As far as the general threat assessment was concerned, we didn't have prior knowledge of this attack," British Home Secretary Charles Clarke told the Sky News network. "We obviously are looking very carefully at all our intelligence to see if anything was missed, but in fact we don't believe anything was missed. It just came out of the blue."

Officials said the investigation and search for bodies have been hampered by the fear of a subway tunnel collapse. They said authorities hope to acquire more information by viewing the closed-circuit television cameras, or CCTV, installed throughout the London subway system.

"If they weren't suicide bombers, then they must have got on and off these trains," Andy Trotter, deputy chief constable of the British Transport Police, said. "That means their pictures can be grabbed from CCTV cameras.

The Underground network is a CCTV-rich environment, and so this is going to be an intense investigation to look at the images."

Copyright � 2005 East West Services, Inc.

Source: World Tribune

The Antagonist

Posted: Mar 22 2006, 10:34 PM

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Over to Ken:

QUOTE

"You could have had a power surge with a quite catastrophic casualty level. We have always been aware of that on the Underground."

Ken Livingstone, 7th July Review Comittee
March 1st, 2006

No transcript available at time of writing.

The Antagonist

Posted: May 3 2006, 12:15 AM

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More power surges on the underground in October 2005 which, if power surges had anything to do with J7, would make the story below at least the third time in 2005 that power surges had occurred on the underground:

QUOTE

BBC NEWS - Track power surge releases flare

user posted image

Last Updated: Saturday, 1 October 2005, 16:08 GMT 17:08 UK

Train passengers fled a platform after a power surge sent a flare 10 foot into the air from the track.

An eye witness described people screaming as the fireball moved along the track at London Bridge station on Saturday afternoon.

Electrician Peter Difolco, 44, was returning from a shopping trip when he said there was a large flash.

"It was like a Roman candle firework, there was lots of smoke and people were screaming and running out the station."

'Station evacuated'

Mr Difolco, who was with his wife, said he had an idea it was something electrical.

"I had guessed it was something electrical but there were a lot of frightened people.

"There was a small explosion like a firecracker. It went up quite high and started working its way down the track, it went about 120 foot and it lasted for about a minute.

"There were lots of police sirens and then the station was evacuated and staff were comforting people."

British Transport Police confirmed there was an incident involving a power line at the station at about 1330 BST.

The station closed for about 30 minutes.

Source: BBC News

A power surge and a small explosion that sounded like a firecracker? Sounds terribly familiar.

Got any dust?

The Antagonist

Posted: May 3 2006, 07:53 PM

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QUOTE

Mustafa Kurtuldu, 24, from Hackney, said: "The train seemed to almost lift up off the rails. It sounded like an impact. It went white and there were flames outside the train, but they died down quickly."

QUOTE

"There was a fire beside me. I saw flames outside on the window of my carriage,"

numeral	Posted: May 4 2006, 09:40 AM
Group: J7 Forum Team Posts: 4,094 Member No.: 5 Joined: 4-December 05	Reading the article a second time leads me to think that this was not the Underground but surface rail at London Bridge. But it is still a high voltage cable failing spectactularly. In an confined underground tunnel the effect could be more serious. This post has been edited by numeral on May 4 2006, 12:14 PM

Bridget

Posted: May 25 2006, 11:43 AM

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QUOTE

Andy Oppenheimer, an explosives expert with Jane's Information Group, said TATP is strong enough to have caused the damage wreaked by last week's bombs.

But he added that making such a highly volatile explosive stable enough to carry out closely synchronized attacks would have required advanced knowledge of chemistry. Police say the three subway blasts happened within a minute.

The New York Times and the British Broadcasting Corp. also reported that TATP was found in a search of a Leeds home.

http://multimedia.cbs.com/stories/2005/07/...053_page2.shtml

Bridget	Posted: May 25 2006, 11:47 AM
Group: J7 Admins Posts: 10,869 Member No.: 2 Joined: 26-November 05	http://www.interesting-people.org/archives...1/msg00100.html Reid's Shoe Bomb Was Likely Made by an Explosives Expert

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