LONDON - The Royal Vauxhall Tavern presents cabaret by Regina Fong on Thursday evenings and Benjamin's karaoke on Tuesdays. But on Wednesday night local time it was shut when a car pulled up outside. Two men got out. A third remained in the driver's seat.
One of the passengers hung around outside the gate, keeping watch. His companion, clutching something under his jacket, strolled through the open gates of Spring Gardens, a park behind the pub, and quickly clambered up a grassy knoll.
He produced a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, aimed at the top of a building around 300m away, visible over a railway bridge, and squeezed the trigger. As the grenade hit a set of windows on the eighth floor with its customary whoosh and bang, the men scrambled into the car and drove off. It was 9.45 pm.
That, the police believe, is how terrorists carried out their attack on the headquarters of Britain's Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, and secured a major propaganda coup.
Although the police said a number of groups might have been responsible, suspicion had focused on the dissident republican group the Real IRA.
Scotland Yard recovered half of the launcher near the grassy knoll and it is believed to have been an RPG-7, designed to penetrate steel and used extensively against the armoured Land-Rovers of the Royal Ulster Constabulary in Northern Ireland.
The RPG weighs 7.5kg and can be easily folded under a jacket. And it is cheap; thousands were sold off by former Warsaw Pact armies and a large consignment is known to be in the hands of dissident republicans.
Their first appearance on the mainland sent a frisson of apprehension through security forces.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Alan Fry, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, pointed out that the police had warned of possible attacks.
"We have a genuine threat of terrorism in London ... This was an audacious attack in the busy heart of London, and we are going to hunt down whoever was responsible."
He said public figures and Government buildings as well as the coming party conferences would receive greater protection.
The damage to the MI6 building was minor, thanks to the reinforced blastproof windows.
But by striking at such a high-profile and symbolic target in the heart of London, the dissident republicans had sought to prove that they, too, could carry out "spectaculars" like their former comrades, the Provisional IRA who mortared 10 Downing St during a cabinet meeting in 1991.
- INDEPENDENT
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