ONE of the biggest international counter-terrorist exercises ever mounted is to be staged by British, American and Canadian experts early next year.
Thousands of police, servicemen, rescue experts and officials are expected to take part in the transatlantic operation code-named Atlantic Blue and scheduled for late spring.
Officials have told The Times that the exercise will last a week and that the scenario is expected to start with mock terrorist attacks in the United States which then spread to Canada and Britain.
Experts in Washington, London and Toronto are now completing the scenario for the exercise but possible plots are thought to include a chemical, biological or radioactive attack using a so-called “dirty bomb”, threatening serious disruption to transport and communications.
Others could include a series of hijacks that start in the US and spread into the other two countries, or attacks like those of September 11, 2001, carried out simultaneously on big national or international targets.
Advertisement
The Home Office now has a permanent team organising exercises and has brought in police counter-terrorist experts to design the scenarios based on intelligence assessments of al-Qaeda strategies.
American, Canadian and British leaders may ask for additional tests to evaluate new equipment. Equipment was criticised last year after an exercise at Bank station in London. The capital will be the centre for the British part of the exercise, which will also test transatlantic liaison on intelligence and co-ordinated reaction to attacks in large cities.
British officials say that the exercise will evaluate evacuation plans, the handling of injured and dead and the restoration of essential services.
The exercise is considered so important that David Veness, the assistant commissioner at Scotland Yard responsible for counter-terrorist operations, has postponed his retirement next year until after the exercise is completed.
It was first announced in a brief statement from David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, last year and will have taken nearly two years to plan.
Advertisement
The exercise will be the latest in a number of international co-operations. Two years ago 800 rescue workers from Austria, Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden took part in a two-day exercise at the Canjuers military base in the South of France.
The exercise was held in a mock-up of a provincial town and the rescue teams faced a radioactive bomb exploding in a cinema, followed by a toxic ammonia leak at the municipal pool, poisoning swimmers and rescue workers.