LONDON (Reuters) - A suspected car bomb ripped through a busy area of west London late on Thursday, causing several injuries, and informed security experts pointed a finger at the dissident Northern Irish Real IRA guerrilla group.(Read photo caption below).
``I can confirm that there was an explosion outside the Townhouse pub in Ealing Broadway,'' a spokesman at the nearby Southall police station said early on Friday.
Scotland Yard said there were a small number of ``walking wounded,'' with one slightly more serious than the others.
A spokesman for Ealing Hospital told Sky News that at least seven people had been treated for injuries, none of them serious.
Witnesses in the vicinity of the blast saw at least three people hurt. One was lying on a stretcher with back injuries, a second was wearing head dressing and a third had received treatment to one arm.
Police cordoned off streets in the area and there were concerns that a second device may have been left nearby.
Local witnesses spoke of a huge blast that sent up a huge cloud of smoke, blew out windows in local shops and homes and triggered panic among young people who were spilling out of pubs. A water main burst, flooding the street.
IRELAND PROBLEM LOOMS
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on an official visit to South America, condemned the violence.
The blast comes at a delicate time in the Northern Ireland peace process, with rival parties studying ''take-it-or-leave-it'' proposals from Britain and Ireland which vow to cut British troop numbers but demand the Irish Republican Army disarms.
The IRA is operating a cease-fire after 30 years of strife, but breakaway groups like the Real IRA oppose a 1998 peace deal and tend to choose key moments in the peace process to launch spectacular attacks in Northern Ireland and on mainland Britain.
British army experts had defused a large car bomb at Belfast's international airport on Wednesday, and police said a telephone caller claimed the Real IRA guerrilla group had planted the explosives.
The state broadcaster BBC's complex in west London was the scene of a car bomb explosion on March 4, which anti-terrorist police linked to the Real IRA.
PHOTO CAPTION:
A shopping street lies in ruins after an explosion in the west London suburb of Ealing Broadway early August 3, 2001. A suspected car bomb ripped through the busy area late on Thursday, causing several injuries, and informed security experts pointed a finger at the dissident Northern Irish Real IRA guerrilla group. (Chris Helgren/Reuters)