Secret British papers about Al-Qaeda found on train

LONDON (AFP) - British police launched an investigation after two top secret government documents relating to Al-Qaeda and Iraq were found on a train in London, the Cabinet Office said Wednesday.

In the latest embarrassing security breach for Prime Minister Gordon Brown's government, "two documents which are marked as secret were left on a train and have subsequently been handed to the BBC," a Cabinet Office spokesman said.

"There has been a security breach; the Metropolitan Police are carrying out an investigation."

The spokesman declined to discuss the contents of the documents, which one report said were linked to Al-Qaeda's activities in Pakistan, but the BBC said they were an intelligence assessment of Al-Qaeda and an "embarrassing" appraisal of Iraq's security forces.