Car is rammed into Glasgow airport, explodes

LONDON —  Two men crashed a car into the main doors of the Glasgow airport today, and it exploded in a ball of flames just inside the terminal. Authorities arrested the men and shut down Scotland’s busiest airport, but there were no reports of casualties among passengers or other visitors.

The incident came a day after police in central London defused two cars packed with gasoline and gas cylinders, raising fears of new terror attacks two years after suicide bombings on the London transit system.

The two men inside the car were seen setting fire to it and one tried to set himself on fire, according to a witness who helped police wrestle the man to the ground.

“It was an inferno, flames about 35 to 40 feet,” said airport worker Thomas Conroy.

Police said they arrested the two men. The airport and adjacent roads were closed, and flights were canceled.

The British Broadcasting Corp. quoted police sources as saying that one of the men was being questioned and the other was hospitalized under guard.

The BBC aired several witness descriptions of the incident. One of the witnesses, Stephen Clarkson, described how he helped police overpower the driver of the vehicle, whom he described as an Asian male.

Clarkson said he saw the vehicle crash into the terminal. The driver “was lying on the ground and he was on fire. The jeep was actually on fire as well, and there was smoke in the jeep.”

Police arrived and “he got up and started fighting with the police and the airport officials, and I managed to knock him to the ground and the police got on top of him ... and restrained him,” Clarkson said.

Simon Howard, who was in the terminal with his wife and daughter, said he saw a second man looking out of the window of the jeep.

“It looked like he had a petrol bomb in his hand. It was a glass bottle and the top of it was on fire,” Howard said.

Others saw the passenger get out of the car and go to open the trunk of the car before he was restrained by police.

In London, police and explosive experts searched two areas of the city Friday night for clues about the drivers of two Mercedes-Benz cars left parked near Piccadilly Circus, in the heart of London, early Friday.

Several canisters of propane gas and about 60 liters of gasoline were in each car, but police defused them.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s new government held a midday meeting of its emergency response committee on the security situation in London, and reconvened later in the day to discuss the Glasgow incident.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith asked the public to be vigilant, but added: “We mustn’t let the threat of terror stop us from getting on with our lives.”

Scotland Yard issued a statement saying police were carefully reviewing closed-circuit television footage for evidence.

Footage was from myriad surveillance cameras installed around Piccadilly and the underground parking garage about a mile from where the second car was taken after it was towed from an illegal parking spot near a nightclub.

janet.stobart@latimes.com