Europe
Police re-open London road after searching suspicious vehicle
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Jun 29, 2007 - 4:08:24 PM

LONDON (AFP) - Police re-opened a major London road Friday after investigators spent several hours searching a suspicious vehicle, following the discovery of a massive bomb in the capital, a spokeswoman said.

A British police forensics officer stands near the area where police defused a bomb in central London June 29, 2007. (Stephen Hird/Reuters)

Amid heightened security after the overnight bomb alert, officers sealed off a stretch of Park Lane, next to Hyde Park, for some five hours while the vehicle was searched in an underground car park near Marble Arch.

"Park Lane has re-opened in both directions -- north and south," said a police statement, although a police spokesman declined to give any further details about the suspicious vehicle.

Parts of Hyde Park itself was cleared because of its proximity to the garage.

Police declined to say whether the situation is being linked to the discovery of a car bomb outside the Tiger, Tiger nightclub in Haymarket, also in central London, in the early hours of Friday morning.

Peter Clarke, the head of the counter-terrorism unit at London's Metropolitan Police, told a news conference the bomb outside the nightclub could have caused "significant loss of life" if it had exploded.