Asian shop in Scotland gutted, revenge suspected

GLASGOW, Scotland, July 3 (Reuters) Attackers rammed a car into an Asian-owned newsagents near Scotland's biggest city Glasgow today and set it ablaze in what neighbours feared was revenge for Saturday's assault on the city's airport.

Police said they believed the attackers had deliberately reversed the car into the shop on Smithycrost Road in the suburb of Riddrie and then set it ablaze. The shop was burned out.

Police said they had no reason to link the incident to the attack at Glasgow airport, in which two men rammed a fuel-filled jeep into the terminal and set it ablaze.

But neighbours were less circumspect.

''It might have been racially done because of whaa happened at Glasgow airport,'' said Frank Mattheson, a pensioner, who bought his daily newspaper there.

''I heard bangs and saw flames,'' said Margaret Watson, a neighbour in a house across the street. ''I though it was a huge car accident.'' ''It is a good neighbourhood. I am here 29 years and I ain't seen anything like this,'' she said.

British police were holding eight people today, at least four of them foreign doctors, over a suspected al Qaeda plot following the incident at the airport and the discovery on Friday of two car bombs primed to explode in London's crowded theatre and nightclub district.

One British security source said two of the suspects were Indian and the rest Middle Eastern.

Alex Salmond, head of the Scottish administration, deplored any such revenge attacks but welcomed the fact there had been few to date. ''Any incident will be met with the full force of the law,'' he told a news conference.

REUTERS RKM RK2110