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Police hunting London bombers kill man in station

Posted on: Friday, 22 July 2005, 10:30 CDT

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)

Source: REUTERS

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