Terror fear as ‘ bombs’ found in empty f lat

COUNTER-TERRORISM police were called to a suburban street yesterday after two ‘suspicious devices’ believed to be homemade bombs were found inside a flat.

Homes in Harlesden, north-west London, were evacuated after packages were found in an unoccupied two- storey conversion at around 9.30am – just 100ft from the local police station.

A cordon was in place until last night after a forensics team erected a tent in the house’s forecourt in Craven Park, closing local roads.

An initial police assessment showed the packages were improvised explosive devices (IEDs). They were made safe and carried out of the flat for further examination.

One neighbour claimed officers told her at least one of the devices was a ‘pipe bomb’, the London Evening Standard reported.

A specialist team combed the area for further packages but none were found, according to a senior policeman.

Detectives from the Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command last night launched an investigation into who was responsible for the makeshift explosives. Officers said the flat was undergoing refurbishment and standing empty.

No arrests have yet been made and police inquiries will continue today. Neighbour Suwan Lekha, 50, said that police had knocked on her door and warned her of the suspicious devices in the morning.

She said: ‘I was in the house and a policewoman rang the bell and asked me not to go outside and to keep away because they had found a suspicious package that needed to be investigated.

‘I felt safe because there were lots of police officers on the road and I’m away from it, the police do good work.’

Chief Superintendent Simon Rose of the Met Police said: ‘I’d like to thank local residents in the area for their patience and understanding whilst we dealt with this incident today.

‘The public’s safety is our top priority, and I would like to pay tribute to the specialist officers who attended and were able to safely recover the devices.

‘I also want to reassure the local community that we have carried out precautionary searches in the surrounding area to make sure there was nothing else of a similar nature nearby, which I’m pleased to confirm is the case.

‘The next stage is to investigate how and why the two devices came to be in this flat and detectives from the Counter Terrorism Command will be leading this.’

‘They asked me not to go outside’