BBC Website
Car bomb discovery: Eye-witnesses
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6252730.stm
Police disabled a car bomb in central London which was found to be loaded with nails and petrol. People living and working nearby have described the scene.
Officers carried out a controlled explosion after reports of a suspicious vehicle parked in Haymarket shortly before 0200 BST.
The area was cordoned off as forensic experts examined what they described as a "potentially viable explosive device".
Local resident Angela Coster, who lives in Haymarket, told the BBC she found out about the bomb from television news.
"We're in a residential block in Haymarket - it seems strange that there's 18 flats in the block and not one person was woken up. It's kind of off-putting in a way," she said.
People are just having a look and obviously wanting to know how they can get to where they're going
Sonja Bakkes
Ms Coster said a police officer could not tell her whether she would be able to return home after work.
"He had no idea whether we'd be able to get back in or not... if the blue tarp is still there I don't think I'll feel very safe," she said.
Another eye-witness Sonja Bakkes said that most people in the area seemed "very blasé" about the situation.
"People are just having a look and obviously wanting to know how they can get to where they're going but everyone's very calm. No one's overly excited.
"Everyone's going to work as usual... I don't think people really know what's going on."
'Movie set'
Alexander Aragon, who lives 100m from Tiger Tiger nightclub, where the suspicious car was found, decided to stay home after police told him that if he left his building he may not be allowed to return.
"Everything's dead quiet," he told the BBC News website. "The best way to describe it, like my wife said, is it's like the movie 28 Days Later." "
He said police were patrolling the area, but by midday they had removed one of the cordons near his block.
Yoo Na Lee, a tourist from Korea, was at the site with her boyfriend and was taking pictures of what she believed was a movie set.
"We thought a Hollywood star was here and it was a movie scene," she said. "We did not know it was the news."
Anxious
Local resident Alan Bassett said that police had surrounded every exit to his apartment building as he left for work in the morning.
"No-one attempted to evacuate us out of the flat as far as I'm aware. They're very anxious not to let me go back into my flat now," he said.
"If I hadn't put the BBC on this morning I'd have had no idea what was going on at all."
Robert Hoadley, who manages many of the landmark buildings in the area - including The Trocadero, London Pavilion and Lillywhite's - told the BBC the bomb was found at a busy time of day in that part of town.
"This time of the morning you've got a lot of bus routes going down past there, I think the number 38 bus - one of the main bus routes into Victoria goes past there - so that's certainly where I saw the barriers up and the screens up from the back of the police cordon at the Lillywhite's end of Jermyn Street," he said.
This could be an all day TV news assault.
