Man questioned over bomb campaign

Bombing rocked BBC building in March last year

Police are continuing to question a 33-year-old man arrested in Northern Ireland under the Terrorism Act in connection with police inquiries into the bombs in Birmingham, Ealing and west London last year.

The man was arrested on Wednesday at the request of the Metropolitan Police Service anti-terrorist branch.

He has been taken to a central London police station where he is being questioned.

The explosion that rocked Birmingham city centre last November was the latest in a series of bomb attacks in England for which dissident republican paramilitaries were blamed.

Car bomb was detonated in Ealing last August

The Birmingham bomb exploded in a car parked close to New Street railway station. No-one was injured despite the area being packed with revellers.

Last August, four people were treated in hospital after a car bomb went off at Ealing Broadway in West London.

Police had warned of a terror campaign directed against Britain after a bomb exploded outside the BBC Television Centre's in west London last March.

Dissident republicans opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process were blamed by the police for carrying out all three attacks.

Two dissident groups, the Real IRA and Continuity IRA, have been behind a campaign of continuing attacks on police and army installations in Northern Ireland.

In 2000 and 2001, the dissidents moved their main focus to Britain where the bombings of high-profile targets - dubbed 'spectaculars' were seen to be attempts to capture the media's attention.