Police hunting London bombers kill man in station

By Katherine Baldwin

LONDON (Reuters) – Police shot a man dead at a London
underground rail station on Friday during a hunt for bombers
who struck two weeks after suicide attacks killed 52 rush-hour
commuters.

Saying the man was directly linked to an “anti-terrorist”
probe, police asked for help in tracing four men in connection
with the attacks that caused chaos but killed no one in
Thursday’s apparent bid to repeat the July 7 attacks.

Police issued photos of the four suspects taken by
closed-circuit television cameras on London’s transport
network. They did not say whether the dead man was one of the
attackers.

The man shot was “directly linked to the ongoing and
expanding anti-terrorist operation,” Metropolitan Police chief
Ian Blair told a news conference. “The man was challenged and
refused to obey police instructions.”

Witnesses spoke of panic as a man of south Asian appearance
wearing a heavy jacket vaulted over barriers at Stockwell
station on Friday as he was chased, tackled, then shot.

Commuter Teri Godly said she stood next to the man early on
Friday before police charged in.

“A tall Asian guy, shaved head, slight beard, with a
rucksack got in front of me. Shortly after that, as I was about
to get onto the train, eight or nine undercover police with
walkie talkies and handguns started screaming at everyone to
‘get out, get out’,” she told Sky News television.

“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I saw them
kill a man basically. I saw them shoot a man five times,”
witness Mark Whitby told BBC television.

“The other passengers were distraught. It was just mayhem,
people were just getting off the Tube … People running in all
directions, looks of horror on their faces, screaming, a lot of
screaming from women, absolute mayhem.”

RESPONSIBILITY CLAIM

Witnesses said there was confusion as shocked passengers
tried to work out what was happening. One man spoke of a
strange smell that seemed to be coming from a smoking bag on
the train.

The Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade, an al Qaeda-linked group
that claimed responsibility for the July 7 bombings, said in a
statement on an Islamist Web site it was behind the attacks.

“Our attack in the heart of the infidel British capital is
nothing but a message to all European governments that we will
not rest until all the infidel troops leave Iraq,” said the
group, whose claims of responsibility for previous attacks in
Europe have been discredited by security experts.

Britain is the closest U.S. ally in Iraq.

Sheikh Omar Bakri Mohammed, one of Britain’s most outspoken
Islamic clerics, vowed militant Islamists would go on attacking
until the government pulled its troops out of Iraq.

As forensics experts studied the three underground trains
and a double-decker bus hit by the small, near-simultaneous
explosions, police were called to a series of security alerts.

In Harrow Road in west London, armed police searched a
house. A police spokeswoman said no arrests had been made.

Police said they were conducting two other raids.

As the manhunt intensified, commuters eyed one another
nervously on buses and underground trains.

“You can see passengers are more nervous as they get on the
bus, they glance at people with bags and I am always looking at
peoples’ bags,” said bus driver Danny Prescott.

A union official warned that hundreds of underground train
drivers might refuse to work if there were more attacks.

In New York, commuters faced random searches of backpacks
and packages as police stepped up checks.

MORE CLUES

British police have more clues from Thursday’s attacks,
including the unexploded bombs, witness reports and CCTV
footage, than they had after the July 7 suicide bombs that
killed 52 commuters and the four bombers and wounded 700.

Research published by tourist group VisitBritain said
Britain could lose at least 300 million pounds ($525.3 million)
in lost tourism revenues due to the attacks.

The pound fell against the dollar and the euro after first
reports of the shooting, while government bonds around the
world edged higher on safe-haven buying.

Stocks markets across Europe, unsettled by Thursday’s
attack, fell on the shooting news with the pan-European
benchmark FTSEurofirst index down 0.3 percent. They recovered
the losses later in the day.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Gray, Mark Trevelyan, Yara
Bayoumy, Sumeet Desai, Katie Allen, Kate Holton, Mike Peacock,
Jeremy Lovell, Matthew Jones, Fiona Shaikh)