London ‘open for business’ after bombings-police

By Paul Majendie

LONDON (Reuters) – Police urged Londoners to get back to
work on Monday to show the suspected al Qaeda bombers who
killed at least 49 people that they had not cowed the British
capital into submission.

“London is open for business. If we don’t do that, then the
terrorists will have won and that’s not what we want,” said
Deputy Chief Constable Andy Trotter.

Police, hunting the bombers who targeted three underground
trains and a double-decker bus last Thursday, have warned that
the forensic search for clues is a painstaking process that
could take time.

Until then, Britain is on high alert in case the killers
strike again.

Interior Minister Charles Clarke conceded that Britons
would inevitably be on edge until they are caught.

“The most important thing is to find the people who
committed the attacks. Once that happens, people will feel they
are more certain in where they are,” he said.

“Our fear is, of course, of more attacks until we succeed
in tracking down the gang that committed the atrocities on
Thursday,” he said, adding hunting for clues was a laborious
process: “Getting the forensic evidence needed to do that will
be painstaking.”

Defense Secretary John Reid echoed Clarke’s fear of more
attacks, saying: “Those who carried out this terrible act may
well try to carry it out again.”

The United States has sent FBI forensic experts to help
British police analyze the crime scene, which British and
American authorities say bears the hallmarks of the al Qaeda
network that attacked the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

“I think we are proceeding on the assumption that the
bombers are still at large and of course that adds a special
urgency to figuring out who’s done this,” said U.S. Homeland
Security Secretary Michael Chertoff.

Security analysts said the bombers, if cornered, could be
deadly.

“In the immediate future, they will be lying low but the
authorities will be searching intensely for them,” said Dominic
Armstrong, head of research at security company Aegis Defense
Services.

“The more extreme Islamist operating instructions dictate
that, if faced with capture, they should kill themselves and
take as many of the enemy with them as they can. This happened
in the aftermath of the Madrid train bombs (in which almost 200
died last year) and could well happen in London,” he said.

Police, searching for clues in London’s deadliest peacetime
bomb attack, have urged the public to e-mail photographs and
video footage taken with digital cameras or mobile phones at
the bomb sites.

“These images may contain crucial information which could
help detectives in what is a painstaking and complex inquiry,”
said Peter Clarke, head of London’s Anti-Terrorist branch.
Investigators have also asked mobile phone and Internet
companies to store the content of voicemails, emails and SMS
text messages that were in their systems on the day of the
London bombings, a police source told Reuters.

Police said they had arrested three people under terrorism
laws at London’s Heathrow airport early on Sunday but had no
cause so far to link them to the bombing. The three men were
arrested on arrival in Britain, police sources said.