Bomb explodes at Hilton after IRA warning

A BOMB exploded at the Hilton hotel in London's West End last night, after a man claiming to be from the IRA had made a telephone warning. There were no casualties.

Police and security staff were searching the building when the device went off in a ground-floor lavatory, causing slight damage. The warning was made an hour earlier. 'The call was not direct to us, I believe it went to the NSPCC,' Chief Inspector Robert Chidley said at the the scene later.

The caller made a bomb threat which referred to 'all the hotels in Park Lane' and not specifically the Hilton, police said. Hotels were alerted and security measures put into operation.

Four paramedic teams, six ambulances and four doctors were sent to the scene. Fire crews stood by at other hotels in the area.

Guests at the hotel were asked to stay in their rooms, and customers were evacuated from the lobby and coffee shop. The hotel was fully reopened an hour after the explosion, although nearby streets remained closed.

George Ashou, the duty manager, said that the bomb went off nearly 40 minutes after police began their search of the hotel. 'We hadn't evacuated the hotel because warnings of this kind are so normal now,' he said. 'The bomb went off in the gentlemen's toilets behind my desk. It went off with a bang but not a big bang. Fortunately nobody was in the toilet. Nobody was injured and there is no real damage at all.'

Matt Jones, a doorman at the International Sporting Club near by and a former soldier who served in Northern Ireland, said: 'It was like a thunderflash or firecracker, and I saw the windows of the Hilton offices shaking.'

Police said that a 'very small' explosion occurred just before 8.45pm. The warning call had been made by a man using a recognised IRA code word, who said that a device had been planted in 'a Park Lane hotel'. The road was immediately sealed off. Police later closed parts of the West End while searching for other devices.

Defending his decision not to evacuate the hotel Ch Insp Chidley said: 'If we had taken them outside there would have been a risk of secondary devices.'

The hotel was a target for terrorists in the 1970s. In September 1975, a man and a woman were killed and 62 people injured when a bomb exploded in the main lobby. A warning was telephoned to a newspaper 21 minutes earlier. In December 1973, two small incendiary devices in cigarette packets went off, one in a side entrance to the Hilton, the other in the boot of a car near by. Only minor damage was caused.