Armed police launch raid in West London

LONDON - Armed police carried out a raid in west London late yesterday in their hunt for the bombers behind failed July 21 attacks on city trains and a bus, police said.

Sky TV, citing police sources, said the operation targeted at least one of three suspected bombers still at large. The fourth was arrested on Wednesday.

A Sky reporter said he understood one person had been arrested in the operation.

A spokesman at Scotland Yard police headquarters said: "We are in the early stages of an armed operation." "It's in connection with the attempted bombings on July 21 and cordons are in place as a precaution," he added.

Police are still chasing three of four men who tried to detonate bombs in failed attacks on July 21, exactly two weeks after a team of suspected Islamist militant bombers killed themselves and 52 other people in London.

Local resident Martin Pendergast told Reuters by telephone: "Police have sectioned off my estate and the (nearby) Sutton estate." He said he had heard some sort of blast. "It sounded like a kind of version of a firework mixed with a shotgun," he added.

Another witness reported up to six explosions and said he had been told by police they were caused by stun grenades.

Police specialists in forensic suits were seen preparing to enter a housing estate in the Ladbroke Grove area.

Police have been under pressure to exercise caution after they shot dead Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes in London last Friday because they mistook him for a suicide bomber.

London's police chief Ian Blair said he was devastated for the man's family but defended the "shoot-to-kill" policy with suicide bombers.

In the biggest manhunt ever undertaken by British police, Blair said he was confident the three would-be bombers on the run would be caught.

"How soon it will be, I don't know. But I am quite sure the net is closing," he said.

Police are reviewing 15,000 closed circuit television tapes, have taken 1800 witness statements and received 5000 calls on their anti-terrorism hotline.

One of the underground railway stations targeted by the July 7 suicide bombers was reopened on Friday.

Seven people were killed when a bomb ripped through a train passing through the Edgware Road station.

- REUTERS