Airport Attacks: Tanks convoy 'part of Army training exercise'

A CONVOY of Army tanks appeared on the boundaries of Heathrow airport yesterday as police and military personnel continued to conduct sweeps of the area for further hidden IRA mortar bomb sites, writes Terry Kirby.

The Ministry of Defence and the Metropolitan Police strongly denied that the three Scimitar light tanks, close to police search teams, were part of the security operation.

So far, the police have resisted calls for full scale Army back-up and have only accepted specialised searching equipment and operators.

A MoD spokesman said: 'The tanks were on a routine driver training exercise from Windsor barracks. . . They were not part of any guard duty and it would be misleading to suggest that they were.'

Meanwhile, explosives experts were still trying to establish why all 12 mortar bombs in the three attacks failed to detonate. It is now believed all three sites were constructed at the same time.

Police sources yesterday rejected the theory advocated by some Republican sources and John Hume, the SDLP leader, that the bombs were never meant to explode and were designed to symbolically demonstrate the IRA's potential.