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Cooperative Bank, Market Street, Watford is under armed siege. Police marksmen everywhere, public areas cleared and a guy inside threatening to blow himself up.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-13629679
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/jun/02/watford-bank-surrounded-armed-police

As he let the people inside go, including the bank staff I strongly doubt this is a terrorist threat, likely someone whose finances soured and crossed the line in despair after their dreams evaporated.

Its my bank by the way, my branch, and I narrowly avoided being caught up in this myself, and am concerned. The Cooperative is a good bank, and this is a good branch, and I mean that, always nice, always helpful. They even waive fees after they have a cast iron right to charge them, not something banks are known to often do, they have done so to me on no less than three occasions when circumstances were against me such as for early direct debits or my pay being late in causing an unexpected overdraft.

Edit - Update man surrenders to police and is arrested, noone hurt.

It's good he surrendered...
Did he actually have a bomb?

purplefood wrote:It's good he surrendered...
Did he actually have a bomb?

Yes he did, what it was and whether it was correctly wired and functional is something the army will look into


Automatically Appended Next Post:
According to the Harrow press he first tried to get in the Nat West but was excluded by the emergency shutter system, so he then went into the Co-operative Bank next door.

So he probably had a grievance at banks as a whole, and possibly Nat West in particular because they recognised the threat quickly. However that also accounts for why he let the Co-operative bank staff go quickly (they likely werent the people he had a grievance with).

I was getting updates by a friend that lives in Watford. She seemed pretty excited by it all.