Bomb alert forces Tesco store closures

Police closed 14 Tesco stores across the UK yesterday after a nationwide security operation, thought to have been prompted by a bomb threat.

Officers in Hertfordshire, where Britain's largest supermarket chain has its headquarters, said threats – not thought to be terror-linked – had been made against the stores and that no one had been hurt in the incidents.

Hertfordshire Police said it had "launched a criminal investigation following a series of threats made to 14 Tesco stores across the country that occurred today. Police were alerted immediately and have liaised with Tesco throughout the day. Public safety has been of paramount importance to all involved."

One London store reopened last night and police said Tesco would re-open the other stores as soon as possible. The closures, police stressed, had been merely a precaution and there was no reason to believe that "the incidents were linked to extremism of any kind".

Tesco branches were closed in Dalgety Bay in Fife, Market Harborough, Ashby de la Zouch, Bury St Edmunds, Barr-head, near Glasgow, West Mercia and Riverside, Port Talbot, in Wales. Stores in Strathclyde, Humberside, Nottinghamshire, Hertfordshire, London and Lancashire were also affected

In Barrhead, near Glasgow, the branch manager said staff were sent home around 12:30pm yesterday following a power failure. However, a cashier at a nearby shop said police told him there had been a bomb threat. The unidentified employee said: "I saw all the Tesco staff standing outside. Police came and told us it had received a bomb threat. They suggested we may also want to close, but our manager has kept us open." Other shops next to the Barrhead branch also continued trading during the afternoon.

In Fife, a worker in a hotel near the Tesco branch in Dalgety Bay said the store was also closed at around 12.30pm.

The employee, who did not want to be named, said: "The staff have all left for the weekend. We heard it was something to do with a bomb scare."

A worker at a Tesco store in Derbyshire said all staff there had also been told the closure was due to an electrical failure. "It was a power failure, that's what all the customers and staff were informed of," the worker, identifying himself only as Darren, told BBC News.

Witnesses said approach roads to the main Tesco store in Bury St Edmunds had been blocked by police. In Market Harborough and Ashby de la Zouch diversions were set up around the stores and areas surrounding the buildings were cordoned off.

A South Wales Police spokesman said the Tesco store at Riverside, Port Talbot, had been closed. Officers would remain there as long as necessary.

The Tesco shutdowns come just months after The Independent on Sunday revealed that MI5 has trained UK supermarket chains to identify potential terrorists after warning them of the potential bomb risk in shops and underground car-parks. The former head of MI5, Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, warned that supermarkets are an attractive target for al-Qa'ida because of the potential to cause mass casualties through bombings or poison plots. MPs warned in a 2003 report that more needed to be done to protect the food industry after Tesco itself revealed that there was a "real and current threat" of terrorists contaminating its food supplies. In the US last year, Hamid Hayat, 23, was convicted for plotting a jihad against US hospitals and supermarkets.

Tesco, which has 1,988 stores and employs around 270,000 staff in the UK , remained tight-lipped last night. "Police are investigating and so we are unable to comment further," a spokeswoman said.