London, Sep 8 - Three men have been found guilty of plotting to kill thousands of people by blowing up planes flying from London to America with home-made liquid bombs, BBC reported Monday.

A Woolwich Crown Court jury convicted Abdulla Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, of conspiring to activate bombs disguised as drinks.

Four other men were found not guilty of involvement in the suicide bomb plot.

The men's arrests in August 2006 led to new airport restrictions on liquids and brought chaos to travellers.

The jury heard that at the time of his arrest, plot ringleader Ahmed Ali had identified seven US and Canada-bound flights to blow up over the Atlantic within a two-and-a-half-hour period.

They were flights from London's Heathrow airport to San Francisco, Washington, New York, Chicago, Toronto and Montreal.

His so-called 'quartermaster', Sarwar, had secured bomb ingredients at his home in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, and a flat in the Walthamstow area of east London had become the bomb factory.

There the men put together a special mixture of chemicals that they planned to take onto planes in ordinary sports drinks bottles stored within hand luggage.

Ahmed Ali, of Walthamstow, Hussain, of Leyton, east London, and Sarwar had been found guilty previously of a conspiracy to murder involving liquid bombs.

But the jury in that first trial could not decide whether their plans extended to detonating the devices on planes. Now a second jury has decided that such a scheme did exist.

The plot is believed by intelligence sources to have been directed by Al Qaeda. The BBC understands that the key contact for the plotters in Pakistan was a British man, Rashid Rauf.