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Europe to fall silent for UK bomb victims

Posted on: Thursday, 14 July 2005, 03:52 CDT

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.

Source: REUTERS

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