Rocket man: UK police have held an unusual training course, to teach residents in a quiet village how to identify terrorists armed with rocket launchers. Picture: Issouf Sanogo Source: AFP
A QUIET English village was given a briefing by cops on how to pick terrorists armed with rocket launchers.
Villagers were shocked when police told them that some areas of Surrey - on the southwestern outskirts of London - had been identified as potential "high-risk launch sites" for terrorists to fire rockets at planes taking off or landing at Heathrow Airport.
The Metropolitan Police's (MPS) specialist aviation security team has been visiting village halls with a surface-to-air rocket launcher and video footage of a missile striking a plane in Iraq.
James Nicholls, who attended one of the meetings in Ockham in June, described the briefing as "extraordinary."
"We were asked to look for people burying things in the ground, we were shown all the components of this heat-seeking shoulder-launched missile," he said.
"They told us, 'there's no threat whatsoever,' but please be on the lookout. This is an awful lot of work to be putting in if there is no threat," he added.
Nicholls said police also suggested that terrorists might smuggle a weapon from Afghanistan and bury it in the countryside.
The MPS said the briefings were part of a community awareness program.
A spokesman said, "The MPS regularly holds community engagement events to build relations with the community and to encourage the public to be vigilant and to report any suspicious activity to police. This is part of an ongoing process and is not in response to any specific intelligence."
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