London - Two doctors went on trial in Britain Thursday over failed car bomb attacks on a London nightclub and Glasgow airport last year which the prosecution said were aimed at "committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale."

Bilal Abdulla, a 29-year-old Iraqi doctor, and Jordanian neurologist Mohammed Asha, 27, were members of an Islamic terrorist cell who wanted to "kill the innocent and seize public attention around the world," prosecutor Jonathan Laidlaw told Woolwich Crown Court in London.

The two men deny plotting a terrorist campaign.

Abdulla was arrested after a burning jeep filled with explosives was driven into the main terminal building at Glasgow airport on June 30, 2007. The driver, Indian-born Kafeel Ahmed, died of his severe injuries five weeks after the failed attack.

Asha, who worked as a hospital doctor in Newcastle-under-Lyme, north-west Britain, was arrested driving along a motorway in northern Britain with his wife and child later that day.

The prosecution alleges that both men plotted the attacks, together with Ahmed, and were motivated by "revenge" for how they believed Muslims were being treated in conflicts around the world by Britain, Laidlaw said.

"Their plan was to carry out a series of attacks on the public using bombs concealed in vehicles. No warnings were to be given and the cars were to be positioned in busy urban areas. These men were intent on committing murder on an indiscriminate and a wholesale scale," he said.

The court heard that two remotely-controlled car bombs left outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in central London in the early hours of the June 29, 2007, would have killed many young people who were out in the area's bars and clubs.

"The repeated attempts to detonate the vehicles failed but that was not through any lack of effort by the bombers. It was no more than good fortune that nobody died," said the prosecutor.

The cars had been packed with gas canisters, containers full of petrol and "large quantities of nails," the court heard.

The 30 June attempted attack on Glasgow Airport, the court heard, was a "dramatic change" in plan because of the unexpected failure of the previous day.

Pictures of the burning jeep, jammed in the terminal's entrance doors, became an enduring symbol of the failed attacks.

In his opening statement, Laidlaw also referred to the "extraordinary" fact that the two defendants were doctors.

"As the evidence demonstrates, they turned their attention away from the treatment of illness to the planning of murder," said Laidlaw.

"Despite their professions and their obligations to save life and avert suffering, they both share the same extreme religious and murderous ideology as has inspired other terrorists who have struck at or threatened this country in recent years," said the prosecutor.