Glasgow Airport ten years on: The act of terrorism that shook nation to its very core

One of the would-be killers died, but remarkably not one of thousands of holidaymakers and other people in the terminal on one of its busiest days of the year – June 30 2007 – lost their lives.

The drama began on a grey Saturday afternoon on the roads of Loch Lomond as the net closed in on Kafeel Ahmed, an engineer, and Bilal Abdulla, a British-born doctor whose family hailed from Iraq.

Just 24 hours earlier they had failed in a bid to let off a bomb in London’s West End. Police had discovered the device in the boot of a Mercedes in the early hours of June 29 in the city’s Haymarket.

Glasgow Airport ten years on: The quiet village street where two terrorists plotted mass murder

Counter-terrorist officers were on their trail after tracking their route to Scotland following a mobile phone call one of the suspects had made.

Ahmed, an engineer, and Abdulla , an Iraqi-born doctor, then decided to target Glasgow Airport with the aim of slaughtering dozens of holidaymakers, other airline passengers and airport staff.

Miraculously, Ahmed was the only person to die after their Jeep Cherokee smashed into the main terminal laden with gas cannisters and petrol and exploded in flames. The events that led to the airport being targeted began in the UK capital day before, with an early morning attempt to detonate two car bombs in a street and outside a busy nightclub.

The base for the thwarted attack was a rented house in a quiet part of Houston, Renfrewshire.Outside their bomb factory in Neuk Crescent in Houston, Renfrewshire, the pair had loaded two hired Mercedes with gas cannisters, petrol and bags of nails and wired up detonators which they hoped to trigger by a mobile phone call.

Yet the bombs merely sputtered out due to faulty wiring and the heavy mix of fuel fumes and oxygen. Metropolitan police officers were alerted by members of the public to one car after it was seen filled with smoke.

The other car had been impounded in a car-park for illegal parking.

The pair returned to Scotland by train, but news broke shortly after midnight of the attack and they would have known they were fugitives.

Glasgow Airport ten years on: The quiet village street where two terrorists plotted mass murder

At their rented house in Houston, they picked up Abdulla’s Cherokee and circled Loch Lomond aimlessly – one hour later police raided the property finding the components needed to carry out the London attack.

When Ahmed sent a text message to his brother in Liverpool at 1.47pm on June 30, it was traced to a mobile phone mast serving the Loch Lomond area.

If it had been a city their exact location would have been pinpointed, but on rural roads only a A wide area could only be identified and as officers pursued them along the A82 on the western side of the loch, they headed for the airport.

Arriving just after 3pm, the Jeep drove at 30 mph through the drop-off area - which was then directly outside the terminal entrance - and deliberately crashed into a concrete stanchion as they attempted to ram into the building. For all the meticulous scheming Ahmed and Abdulla had put into the London bombs, the Glasgow attack had been thrown together at the last minute - a brute force attempt to take as many lives as possible with no regard to the bombers own safety. Like the London bombs, the The Jeep was packed with gas cannisters and petrol, but there were no switches or mobile-phone operated detonators.

Instead, the gas was to be ignited by simply setting fire to the car, cooking the canisters into a deadly explosion, which would have torn through the terminal.

Pandemonium broke out the moment the car struck the building.

The airport was packed with 3,500 passengers on its busiest day of the year, and there were long queues at the check-in desks.

Employee Gillian Girasoli was trampled in a crush as people tried to flee in scenes reminiscent of the 9/11 attack on the Twin Towers. She said: “It was chaos. I saw smoke and people running.

“I was in a press of bodies heading for the exit. I saw a young girl screaming and a man picked her up and put her above his head.

“Eventually, I managed to get to the exit. “I remember falling over and being trampled on.” As I fell, I pressed the video on my mobile and I was recording.”“Someone stood on me and then a guy, I don’t know who, pulled me upright.”Ahmed threw a hastily cobbled-together Molotov Cocktail – the wick made from surgical gauze had been procured by Abdulla, before emptying a can of petrol over the vehicle which consumed him.

Glasgow Airport ten years on: The quiet village street where two terrorists plotted mass murder

Former fireman Henry Lambie, who was trying to put out the blaze, said that Ahmed pointed towards the Jeep and said “there are bombs”.

“I thought he was going to have a go at me so I hit him in the face with the jet of water,” said Mr Lambie. “I thought he was on drugs or something.”

People tried to extinguish Ahmed as he writhed in agony, covered head to toe in flames. He died a month later in hospital from his injuries. Mr McIlveen said: “There was two people with fire extinguishers trying to hose him down. He was burnt. It was quite weird - he wasn’t shouting for help, because he was burnt.”

Police officer, PC William Thomson, tried to get hold of Ahmed. He failed, he later said, because his “skin came off in my hands”. Ahmed suffered 90 per cent burns and later died of his injuries.

Abdulla was overpowered by police and airport workers. Abdulla, now 36, is serving at least 32 years in prison for the offences. a life sentence for which he must spend at least 32 years in prison for the attacks.

While the pair’s would-be Jihad was coming to a stuttering stop, the jeep continued burning. Firefighters were able to put out the blaze, and none of the cannisters went off.

It would later be revealed that they had been stacked too tightly to ignite, their position in the vehicle insulating them against the heat.

Once again, a massacre was averted by the smallest of margins.

Former detective David Swindle who led the investigation into the bombers in the aftermath of the attack, said: He said: “They failed in London and there was determination to do something.

“They chose an easy target and they chose it at the maximum time, as it was the first day of the school holidays.

“If it hadn’t been for a concrete stanchion, the Jeep would have entered the terminal building. You can never know how many, but there would have been fatalities.”