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GLASGOW, Scotland - British police were hunting on Monday for accomplices of suspected militants who rammed a burning jeep into a Scottish airport and tried to detonate two car bombs in central London.
Britain's security has been raised to its highest level, "critical", meaning an attack is believed to be imminent.
A police source said a manhunt was under way for an unspecified number of suspects after five people were arrested at the weekend. All five detained were thought to be foreigners, the source said.
Britain's top-selling Sun newspaper identified one of those detained as an Iranian doctor who worked at North Staffordshire Hospital in central England. A spokeswoman at the hospital declined to comment on the case and police would not identify those detained.
British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, facing a difficult test in his first few days in office, said those behind the botched attacks were associated with al Qaeda.
"We are dealing with a long-term threat," Brown said. He said the attacks could not be justified as opposition to Britain's foreign policy.
"Irrespective of Iraq, irrespective of Afghanistan, we have an international organisation trying to inflict the maximum damage on civilian life in pursuit of a terrorist cause that is totally unacceptable to most people."
US President George W Bush praised Brown for a "very strong response" to the attacks.
"It just goes to show the war against these extremists goes on," Bush told reporters at his family's home in Kennebunkport, Maine.
Brown last week replaced Tony Blair, whose 10 years in office were marked by an aggressive stance on security and a foreign policy which strongly supported the United States in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Peter Clarke, the head of London's anti-terrorism police, said authorities were making swift progress in uncovering the suspected terrorist network behind the threats.
"The investigation into these attacks is extremely fast-moving. It is no exaggeration at all to say that new information is coming to light hour by hour," Clarke said.
The plots raised the spectre of attacks on London transport two years ago that killed 52 commuters.
Authorities ramped up security measures at airports and extra police officers patrolled rail stations and increased checks ahead of the Monday morning rush-hour.
"The main thing we are doing is asking passengers to continue to be vigilant and go about their business," said a spokesman for Britain's transport police.
On Saturday local time, police arrested the passenger and badly-burned driver of a Jeep Cherokee who ploughed their vehicle into the entrance of Glasgow's airport and set it alight in a huge fireball.
The attack came 36 hours after police found two Mercedes car bombs packed with fuel canisters, propane tanks and nails parked near a crowded nightclub in London's teeming theatre district.
Police say the London and Scotland incidents are linked. On Sunday they raided a house in an affluent suburb about 10 minutes from the Glasgow airport, where neighbours said two Asian men had moved in just weeks ago.
Most of the Asian population in Britain comes from the sub-continent, including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.
The other arrests included a 26-year-old man and a 27-year-old woman seized on a major highway in northern England on Saturday, and a 26-year-old man in Liverpool.
Heathrow evacuation
Authorities evacuated a terminal at London's Heathrow airport on Sunday local time to investigate a suspect package but later declared the area safe. Police also carried out a controlled explosion on a suspicious car parked at a hospital near Glasgow.
They said the car, near the hospital where one of the two Glasgow airport assailants was being treated for severe burns, was linked to the attack but not thought to contain explosives.
The United States has also ramped up transportation security, including more air marshals on flights to Britain.
There have also been reports in the American media that US authorities had received information about an attack.
Asked whether there had been any specific intelligence, Michael Chertoff, the Secretary of Homeland Security, said: "I am not going to comment on specific intelligence either to say we had something or we didn't have something.
"You can rest assured that whatever information the US government and intelligence had was shared very readily with our British counterparts."
Britain has seen an increase in terrorism-related threats since the September 11 strikes on the United States and since it joined US forces in invading Iraq in 2003. Some analysts believe the latest attacks may be designed to exert pressure on Britain to withdraw its troops from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The series of plots comes almost two years since the July 7, 2005 suicide attacks on London's transport system, when four British Islamists killed 52 commuters.
- REUTERS / INDEPENDENT
