Europe to fall silent for UK bomb victims

By Jeremy Lovell

LONDON (Reuters) – People across Europe will pay silent
tribute to the victims of last week’s London suicide attacks on
Thursday as police try to work out who might have sent the
young British bombers out on their deadly mission.

London will lead the two-minute silence at midday (1100
GMT). Workers have been urged to leave their offices and line
the streets. Taxis and buses will stop while planes at the
country’s airports will switch off their engines and delay
take-offs.

Commuters will fall silent on the London Underground,
targeted by three of the bombers, and even hospital workers
treating the wounded from the blasts will pause.

Golfers at the 134th British Open championship will stand
quietly on the fairways and greens of the St Andrews course in
Scotland in memory of the 52 people killed in the attacks.

“London will remember all of those who died last Thursday
and show its defiance of those who try to change the character
of our city through terror,” said mayor Ken Livingstone.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, who on Wednesday said he would
look urgently at new measures to tackle extremism, is due to
mark the silence at his Downing Street office.

Tributes will also be paid in Madrid and Bali — both
targeted by bombers from the Islamist al Qaeda network in the
past — as well as cities across Europe.

Police were continuing to search a house in the market town
of Aylesbury about 40 miles northwest of London in the search
for those they believe plotted the bombings — the first
suicide attacks in western Europe.

They raided the house on Wednesday night but made no
arrests and found no explosives.

DETAILS OF BOMBERS EMERGING

Officers were also questioning a 29-year-old man arrested
on Tuesday on suspicion of the “commission, instigation or
preparation of acts of terrorism.”

He was held in Leeds, the home town of at least three of
the four bombers. They were young British Muslims of Pakistani
origin, details of whom are still emerging.

One was 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer, a keen cricketer who
helped out at his father’s fish and chip shop. Friends and
family said he was fanatical about sport but not about politics
or religion.

The other two have been named as 18-year-old Hasib Mir
Hussain and Mohammed Sadique Khan, 30, a husband and father who
worked as a teaching assistant looking after disabled children.
The fourth bomber has not been named.

Britain’s newspapers were dominated by details of the men.

“The boy who grew up to bomb the No 30 bus,” was the
headline in The Independent next to a photo of Hussain as a
10-year-old schoolboy.

He blew himself up on a double-decker bus in central London
a week ago, an hour after the other three bombers struck in
quick succession at three London Underground stations.

The Guardian printed a photograph of Shahara Islam, a
20-year-old who was one of Hussain’s victims, and contrasted
her story as a young British Muslim with his.

She was one of 22 victims of the bombs to be identified and
11 who have been named. Coroners are still trying to formally
identify the other 30 victims.

Security experts have said the bombers would have received
training and direction from a more senior militant.

“He would have arrived in the UK a knowledgeable bomb
maker, trained in the art of evading the authorities by keeping
a low profile,” consultancy group Janusian Security Risk
Management said in an analysis for clients.

“He likely left the UK immediately before the bomb blasts,
so as to ensure escape.”

Several newspapers identified more suspects who they said
police were hunting.

One was described as an Egyptian chemistry student at Leeds
University who had lived in the same area of the city as the
bombers but who had disappeared days before the attack.

Another was described as a British-born al Qaeda operative
who arrived in the country by sea three weeks ago and left
again hours before Thursday’s blasts.