IRA Bomb Factory Found in London; Britons on Alert

Britons were placed on a nationwide terrorist alert Wednesday after an unlucky juvenile car thief inadvertently led police to what they described as a major Irish Republican Army bomb factory in south London, just 8 miles from the city center.

Scotland Yard asked citizens to use one of two special telephone lines to pass on any information that might aid a manhunt for two armed fugitives suspected of having planned a Christmas bombing campaign in the capital.

Assistant Police Commissioner Hugh Annesley, in charge of special operations, said investigators believe that they disrupted the plan but added that the possibility the men had already planted some explosives “cannot be discounted.”

Christmas shoppers throughout the country were warned to be on the alert for suspicious packages or parcels.

Wednesday’s discovery of what police said is one of the largest caches of explosives and weapons ever uncovered here was admittedly a stroke of luck for Scotland Yard’s special anti-terrorist unit. The bizarre sequence of events began in the early hours with what was apparently an attempted car theft.

An 18-year-old youth smashed the driver’s window of what he thought was an empty Renault parked near a block of government-owned flats. A man who police speculated had been sleeping off a drinking binge in the back of the car sat bolt upright and fired a single shot through the smashed window, wounding the youth in the stomach.

Witnesses reported that the gunman then ran into the apartment block.

Police called to investigate the shooting searched a ground-floor flat for the man, who had already escaped with an accomplice. What they found instead were machine guns and a reported 150 pounds of Semtex, a high-powered, Czech-made explosive said to be used frequently by the IRA.

Police could be seen removing at least four large crates of contraband from the south London apartment early Wednesday after ordering other residents to evacuate the area.

A 20-pound Semtex bomb was reportedly used by an IRA squad last August to reduce a brick London army barracks to rubble, killing one soldier and injuring nine others.

“It’s fairly obvious that those who were in the flat (apartment) were in the process of making bombs,” said Annesley. “Now, how many . . . we simply do not know.”

The two suspects had reportedly been in the apartment for about a week.

Police released a photograph of one of the suspects, said to have been discovered in the apartment, and it appeared prominently on the front page of London’s main evening newspaper and on evening television newscasts.

Later, police found the escape car used by the two fugitives abandoned on the other side of the city. Sea and airport authorities were on full alert.

The wounded youth was reported in stable condition in a hospital, and police said it is unlikely that he will be charged with any crime.