Suicide bomb risk to UK 'small'

The UK has increased its security since 9/11

Suicide bombers have the capability to carry out a terror attack on the UK but the risk is small, a study says.

Individuals have the willingness required to bomb British soil, says a study by the Royal Military College of Science at Cranfield University.

But the number of people required to plan and execute a suicide bombing made it easier for the security services to gather intelligence, the study said.

The two-year study examined suicide bombers' tactics and potential targets.

It outlined three main areas of threat:

• a lone suicide bomber targeting any crowded area like a bar, a shopping centre or the Tube
  
• a car bomb driven into a building and detonated by the driver
  
• hostage siege barricade - a group of suicide bombers taking over a building

Professor Chris Bellamy, director of the Security Studies Institute at Cranfield University, said: "What's clear is that in order to manage this real and perceived threat to our national security, we need an integrated approach which in effect means re-writing the handbook for dealing with the current security situation in the UK."

"We have several departments working together to understand from a mathematical as well as operational and global security perspectives how best to manage the risk of suicide bombings on mainland Britain," Professor Bellamy added.

"This is a very different scenario to the one which was presented when the IRA were active during the 1970s and 1980s as the current risk pattern is much harder to identify and predict."

The UK has been on a high state of alert since the bombings in Madrid on 11 March.

It won't necessarily be picture-postcard targets such as Parliament and Buckingham Palace... it could just as easily be bars, clubs, shopping centres and sports venues Former counter-terrorist intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge

Britain's top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir John Stevens, has said the UK was "in a state of real danger" and that an attack was "inevitable."

But Home Secretary David Blunkett has tried to play this down.

In March he said that there needed to be a balance between warning people and just making them "jumpy".

BBC correspondent Angus Stickler told Radio 4's Today programme terror tactics had changed since the IRA's "kill one, scare a thousand" bombing campaigns in the 1970s, according to the research.

"Now they are looking for maximum death toll - to kill as many as they can," he said.

Research academic Kate Whedon, who worked on the study, told BBC News: "They are looking for publicity as well as the death toll - they are not just looking for one side of it anymore, so you have a huge spectrum of things that could be seen as ideal targets."

There is a balance of threats on everything... going shopping in a very busy area, using the rail network or going to large well-publicised events Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Mike Hedges

Former counter-terrorist intelligence officer Charles Shoebridge told BBC News: "It won't necessarily be picture-postcard targets such as Parliament and Buckingham Palace... it could just as easily be bars, clubs, shopping centres and sports venues."

Chief Constable of South Yorkshire Mike Hedges, the Association of Chief Police Officers firearms committee chairman, told Today: "We have been looking at the strategy and tactics to employ not only within the M25 and the picture-postcard sites but also all places of public resort... the malls, the shopping centres in our cities and towns around the country.

"Every force in the country have a number of specially trained counter-terrorism security advisers who get out and around these locations giving advice and guidance.

"We are in the middle of a drive to get home to people it is not always the spectacular that can produce devastating effects - it can be more conventional approaches to terrorist activities, and everyone has the ability to help us prevent these.

"There is a balance of threats on everything... going shopping in a very busy area, using the rail network or going to large well-publicised events - the important thing is the public should continue going about their lives as ordinarily planned otherwise the terrorist is getting the upper hand."

British bombers

But our correspondent said a large number of people were required to plan and execute a suicide bombing.

"Be vigilant, look out for anything suspicious, and let the police know if you see anything that might be slightly dodgy," he added.

There have been British nationals prepared to kill themselves for a cause, he told Today.

On 29 April 2003, Asif Hanif, 21, from Hounslow, west London, blew himself up outside a bar in Tel Aviv, Israel, killing two men and a woman and injuring at least 50 others.

Omar Sharif, 27, of Derby, is believed to have tried to kill himself in the blast but disappeared when his bomb failed to detonate.

His body was found in the sea 12 days later.