LONDON, Oct 6: British Prime Minister Tony Blair has ordered Royal Air Force (RAF) fighter jets to be on 24-hour alert near London so they can shoot down hijacked airliners, a British newspaper reported Friday.

“They (RAF jets) could be over the capital within minutes in the event of any terrorist attempt to repeat the American atrocities,” the Daily Mail said.

“Tony Blair will then personally order them to shoot down the suspect aircraft.”

The security measures were ordered at the first meeting of Cobra — the cabinet’s crisis committee of senior ministers — nine hours after the terrorist air strikes on New York and Washington, according to the paper. Blair alone can order the Tornado F3s into action, it said.

In the United States, President George W. Bush has delegated the responsibility to authorise such action to two US Air Force generals.

Responding to the report, a Downing Street spokesman told AFP: “Has the British government or has the RAF the capacity to intervene at very short notice, should there be some kind of alert in the sky above London, the answer is yes.”

He denied however that jets had already been moved closer to London in preparation.

A defence ministry spokesman earlier told AFP: “The RAF have a capability to defend British airspace. It is a role they can play at short notice.”

On September 11, presumed Islamic extremists hijacked four airliners in the United States and slammed three of them into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon near Washington.

There was a 48-minute interval between the impact of the first hijacked airliner on the World Trade Center and the assault on the Pentagon, prompting questions about why no rapid reaction fighter cover had been put in place.

Information of the extra protection came after Blair became the first Western leader to publicly disclose evidence of Saudi-born Osama bin Laden’s culpability for the attacks.—AFP