a possible target for next terrorist attack?

The 10th IAAF World Championships, starting tomorrow 6.8.2005 in Helsinki Finland. What is your opinion on the possibility that terrorists will strike Helsinki during the games? There are lots of athletes from countries like USA, UK, Israel... 209 countries... some of them would make great targets for Al-Gaeda etc. And the security in Finland isn't as tight as in USA/UK...


[edit on 5-8-2005 by northwolf]

Its possible. To me it seems like a mini olympics, which would make a good target. We will find out tomorrow if anything happens.

Yep
But would the terrorists really commit an attack in "neutral" country, even if it would maximize the publicity of the act?

("neutral" because Finland has a small detachment of men in afganistan and larger peacekeeping forces in balkans)

Its interesting to try and name places that they could attack.

They did say that london and the USA were priority targets of sorts.

What I was thinking of is that they seem, in the UK anyway, to be going after the transport system. So why not plant bombs in cars (lot more space than a backpack) and then blow them up in traffic on, for instance, the M25 at rush hour. If they did this on bridges you would take out traffic on 2 roads.... This would cause mass panic as everybody travels in cars and everybody around london uses the m25.... this in my opinion would be a true terror attack as every car would then be suspect.
The hear of london is well protected now... just drive a car from anywhere int he UK and blow them up on motorways in lunch hour..... Not a very nice thought, but there is no security to stop this. It is unstopable.... which actually sucks

Interesting idea...
...or you might want to blow up the bridge... or a railway bridge...
not too hard thing to do when you know what you're doing. But doing an act like that would require training not easily achievable to public. (i assume that brittish military has blowup plans for all their bridges ready, most other armies that i know of have) but few backpacks loaded with pentrite or m-hexogen and a 2 hours of installing could pring down/severly damage a bridge. (I have military sabotage/demolition training and a friend of mine is a combat engineer Ltn.)

and isn't there a tunnel running beneath Heathrows runways...

It seems security is tightening up here, my friend who lives in Tapiola saw a few military units patrolling in his neighbourhood.

[edit on 5/8/2005 by SwearBear]

Army has deployed military police units to guard some of the areas as well as an army EOD unit is in "high alert"
It's questionable how useful warhounds( conscript MPs) are...
They're not the smartest guys in the army

Also F/A-18s from Airforce are guarding the airspace



ps. no offence to military police, just normal bragging from an old recce

Originally posted by northwolf
It's questionable how useful warhounds( conscript MPs) are...

They're not the smartest guys in the army

True, true

You wouldnt need to blow the bridge to cause the trouble. Okay, as an EXAMPLE, if you had a car filled with high explosives and you were on a bridge over a motorway in traffic, couldnt you, blow the car, damaging the bridge especially (at least its surface, causing it to be shut down), also causing cars to be blown off the sides of the bridge ito the road below. This would consequently damage the road below, causing congestion trouble in London for hours.
If, as the terrorists (?!?!) did, they used multiple bombs and hit different secions of the m25, diifferent bridges, then effectivly blocking the m25 in london at rush hour would cause massssiv panic.
It wouldnt cause that much loss of life.... but the terror of every car in aa traffic jam being a suspect would be hard to compare with....

[edit on 5-8-2005 by Kainen]

Just an addition to Helsinki Games security...

A bomb was found nearby the athletes "village"

Luckily it was a Russian areal bomb dropped during ww2, it was uncovered at a construction site. No one harmed and army experts are working on the bomb.