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HONG KONG, March 29, 2009 (AFP) - Three Hong Kong teenagers have been arrested for possessing explosives of the type used in the 2005 suicide attacks in London, police said Sunday.
The three were arrested after one of them almost had his hand blown off when he set off a homemade bomb in his family's wholesale food store on Saturday.
"The three teenagers have been released on bail while we are investigating the case," a police spokesman told AFP.
Police found that the injured 13-year-old had caused the explosion by igniting a tissue fuse attached to two plastic bottles containing triacetone triperoxide (TATP), the Sunday Morning Post reported.
The boy had two fractured fingers and sustained injuries to his face and eye from the blast but was in stable condition, a government spokesman told AFP.
Police later seized a computer and found six more bottles of TATP in the home of his 14-year-old classmate. Officers from the bomb disposal squad were sent to detonate the explosive materials.
Another 13-year-old classmate was also arrested.
Police suspected the trio learned how to make TATP bombs online and bought the necessary chemicals from local hardware stores and pharmacies, the Post said.
The explosive white powder was favoured by Islamist terrorists and used in the 2005 London transport bombings that killed more than 50 people.
"These explosive materials can be very unstable and it is very dangerous to keep them at home. A massive explosion could be ignited by any bump," Chief Inspector Chan Wai-man, who led the investigation, told the Post.
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