Police carry out controlled explosion after suspicious package found near U.S. Embassy in London

London — Police in London carried out a controlled explosion Friday after finding a suspicious package near the U.S. Embassy in the British capital. They blocked off at least one road near the embassy compound, which sits on the south side of the Thames river in the Nine Elms neighborhood.

“We can confirm that the ‘loud bang’ reported in the area a short time ago was a controlled explosion carried out by officers,” London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement posted online. 

The embassy said in its own social media post that police had closed a road near the building out of “an abundance of caution.”

The U.S. Embassy in London opened in its new location just outside the center of the city at the beginning of 2018. It sits on a sprawling campus relatively far from most public roads and is surrounded by security fortifications.

Former U.K. counterterrorism coordinator Nick Aldworth told CBS News on Friday that the U.S. embassy building is “one of the most secure locations in London.”

“It’s a purpose-built embassy,” he said, which gave the compound “the benefit of being constructed with built-in environmental protective measures” such as earth berms and other physical features, putting it “at the top end of design and location for protecting it from terrorism incidents.”