Blast at British embassy in Chile

LONDON – A small explosion outside the British Embassy in Santiago, Chile, caused minor damage but no casualties, the Foreign Office said yesterday.

The explosion at about 02h15 GMT yesterday was heard throughout the exclusive Las Condes neighbourhood where the embassy is located, according to the daily El Mercurio. A Foreign Office spokesman said it wasn’t immediately clear whether or why the embassy had been targeted.”We share the area with a number of other buildings, including the Israeli embassy, a tobacco company, banks and other things,” a Foreign Office spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.He said the embassy had not received any threats, and that an investigation was under way.He described the cause of the explosion as ‘a small cylinder with exploding powder and a timer’ and said there were no injuries reported.”This is a posh area of town,” he added.A special Chilean police bomb squad was summoned to the site to determine the nature of the blast, but so far no conclusion has been made, police officials said.The Foreign Office spokesman said it was ‘not clear what the target was’.Around 50 000 British tourists visit Chile each year, according to the Foreign Office Website and Britain’s official travel information says the threat from terrorism is low.Britain has been on high alert since failed car bombings in London and Glasgow at the end of June.Authorities briefly raised the national threat level to the maximum, ‘critical’, although it has since been lowered back to ‘severe’, meaning that an attack is highly likely.Last month’s attacks came a week before the second anniversary of July 7 2005 suicide attacks in London which killed 56 including the bombers themselves.Nampa-AP-ReutersA Foreign Office spokesman said it wasn’t immediately clear whether or why the embassy had been targeted.”We share the area with a number of other buildings, including the Israeli embassy, a tobacco company, banks and other things,” a Foreign Office spokesman said, on condition of anonymity in line with department policy.He said the embassy had not received any threats, and that an investigation was under way.He described the cause of the explosion as ‘a small cylinder with exploding powder and a timer’ and said there were no injuries reported.”This is a posh area of town,” he added.A special Chilean police bomb squad was summoned to the site to determine the nature of the blast, but so far no conclusion has been made, police officials said.The Foreign Office spokesman said it was ‘not clear what the target was’.Around 50 000 British tourists visit Chile each year, according to the Foreign Office Website and Britain’s official travel information says the threat from terrorism is low.Britain has been on high alert since failed car bombings in London and Glasgow at the end of June.Authorities briefly raised the national threat level to the maximum, ‘critical’, although it has since been lowered back to ‘severe’, meaning that an attack is highly likely.Last month’s attacks came a week before the second anniversary of July 7 2005 suicide attacks in London which killed 56 including the bombers themselves.Nampa-AP-Reuters