Timeline: Bombers target London

LONDON, England -- The car bomb explosion at London's Ealing Broadway is the second time the area has been targeted in the last 12 months -- and the fourth time for the capital this year.

2001:

February 21 -- A 14-year-old boy is blinded and loses a a hand when he picks up and switches on a booby-trapped torch he finds at a Territorial Army centre in west London. The incident has not so far been conclusively linked with dissident paramilitaries.

March 4 -- A bomb explodes in a taxi parked outside BBC Television Centre in Shepherd's Bush, west London.

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The bomb, which was thought to be the work of the Real IRA, goes off as experts attempt to perform a controlled explosion.

March 18 -- Bomb disposal experts blow up a suspicious vehicle outside BBC World Service headquarters in central London. Police say afterwards it was a false alarm.

April 14 and May 6 -- Two small blasts rock a postal depot in Hendon, north London. Both are thought to be the work of the Real IRA.

Following the three blasts Metropolitan Police assistant commissioner David Veness says he fears worse is to come in the run up to the general election.

"The risk of a car bomb is always present and that is always a very considerable danger to the public."

2000:

June 1 -- A bomb explodes at Hammersmith Bridge in West London. Police believe the device contained half a kilogram of TNT.

July 19 -- A bomb threat sparks a massive security alert on the tube line near Ealing Broadway underground station in West London.

Following a warning, bomb disposal experts perform a controlled explosion on the device four hours after sealing off the area.

September 21 -- A rocket-propelled grenade is fired at the MI6 headquarters at Vauxhall Cross, south London, causing minor damage to the building's eighth floor.

November 12 -- The Sunday Telegraph newspaper reports Britain's security services foiled a plot by the Real IRA to detonate a huge bomb in central London.

"We seized it and discovered a device double the size of the Omagh bomb," a senior security official tells the newspaper, referring to device that killed 29 people in the Northern Irish town of Omagh in 1998.