"Lethal force on the streets of London": British police rehearse for the 2012 Olympics

Bristling with guns, his face masked, a police officer moves in on a suspected suicide bomber.

Just 91 days away from the start of the [London] Olympics, the dramatic scene gave a foretaste of what can be expected this summer after a man threatened to blow himself up in a busy office block.

Thousands were evacuated, Tube stations were closed and streets locked down over a wide area of London's West End.

Snipers, bomb disposal squads, nuclear biological and chemical warfare specialists and dozens of armed police were scrambled to the building on Tottenham scrambled to an office block on Tottenham Court Road, one of the city's busiest shopping streets. [...]

Members of the [London] Metropolitan Police's CO19 firearms unit – several of them former soldiers – covered the windows and entrances with their weapons while others covertly entered the block. […]

Special forces soldiers based in London including the SAS had been put on alert while members of the RAF's [Royal Air Force] nuclear, biological and chemical warfare group was dispatched to the scene. […]