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UK police mount raids, seize car in bombing probe

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 10:43 CDT

By Yara Bayoumy

LEEDS, England (Reuters) - British police raided several homes and seized a car on Tuesday in an apparent breakthrough in their hunt for the bombers behind last week's London attacks blamed on al Qaeda militants.

The raids came as one police source revealed investigators had concluded one of the bombers blew himself up in the attack on a double decker bus.

Sky News reported that all four bombers behind the attacks had died, that police had made arrests in the northern city of Leeds and that there had been raids in London prompted by tests on the body of the bus bomber.

Police did not confirm the reports but were due to give two news conferences, one in London and one near Leeds later on Tuesday afternoon.

Earlier, police raided six houses in Leeds and also shut down a railway station in Luton, just north of London, to recover a car they believe was connected to the four blasts, which killed at least 52 people.

In Leeds, army experts set off a controlled explosion outside one of the houses to give police access. Detectives said the searches were a "significant" part of their probe into the attacks on three underground trains and the bus.

Some 500 people were evacuated from the surrounding streets of red brick terraced houses and a large area of the rundown, racially mixed area of the city was cordoned off.

"It is linked with the ongoing anti-terrorist operation in both the north of England and the south of England," West Yorkshire police inspector Miles Himsworth said when asked whether the searches were linked to the London bombs.

FRUSTRATION

The raids were the first since last Thursday's explosions and came as frustration mounted at what many grieving relatives feel is slow progress in formally identifying the victims of the bombings, which killed at least 52 and injured 700.

Leeds, a city of 715,000 people some 200 miles north of London, has a Muslim population of around 30,000 -- one of the largest in Britain. In May 2001, it was one of a series of northern towns which saw rioting between Asian and white youths blamed on ethnic, religious and racial divisions.

Luton, where police closed streets near the station so they could move the suspect car, also has a large Muslim population.

In Brussels, finance minister Gordon Brown pressed the European Union to speed up a raft of measures aimed at cutting off terrorism funding.

In the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on U.S. cities and the March, 2004 Madrid train bombings, the 25-nation bloc agreed to tighten controls on money transfers and seizing the assets of suspects. Brown wants them to move faster.

But top EU Commission official Fabio Colasanti said a proposal from Britain, Ireland, France and Sweden to log all phone and Internet usage for long periods to help combat terrorism is unrealistic.

ANGRY RELATIVES

British Defense Secretary John Reid appealed to anxious relatives for more time. "It is better to get this right than to get it rushed," he said.

Five days after London's worst peacetime bomb attack, Emmanuel Wundowa angrily complained that he first found out on television that his wife Gladys had been identified as a victim.

"Nobody is telling me anything," he said. "If they have got some information that is of benefit to me, why don't they pass it on to me?"

The names of two more victims were released by police on Tuesday. Scotland Yard said financial workers Jamie Gordon, 30, and Philip Stuart Russell, 28, died in the blasts.

After a wave of public scorn and indignation, the U.S. Air Force rescinded an order banning its personnel at two air bases in Britain from visiting London in the wake of the bombings.

London police chief Ian Blair had urged the Americans to reverse their decision as British authorities had been urging people to return to work and normality after the attacks on three underground trains and a bus.

Blair said London, as well as New York, continued to be "major terrorist targets."

"Another attack is likely, there's no question about that. When, who knows?" he told BBC Radio.

(Additional reporting by Michael Holden, Paul Majendie and Kate Holton)

Source: REUTERS

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