LONDON, March 24 (Xinhuanet) -- Al Qaeda terrorists might try to attack Britain in the run-up to the general elections widely expected in May, the most senior British police officer said in an interview issued Thursday.

   ; "I don't see this in the sense of some huge security operation,but I have pointed out that -- with an election coming up -- terrorists might just remember the bombings in Madrid only a year ago," Sir Ian Blair, the chief of London's Metropolitan police, told Whitehall and Westminster World, a magazine for civil servants.

    "I know my professional intelligence assessments and I know that we are facing a threat more significant than anything we have faced since the Cold War and the Nazi tyranny before it," he said.

    "I can only say that it is inevitable that terrorists will attempt to attack the United Kingdom, because I know they have," he said.

    Nearly 200 people were killed in the Madrid bombings in March last year, days before a general election. Enditem