Police seeking bombers shoot man dead

Armed police stand guard as a northwest London property is searched in the hunt for the bombers who attacked the city's transport system. Picture / Reuters

LONDON - Police last night shot dead a man at a London underground rail station and issued photographs of four men wanted urgently in connection with Thursday's botched attempts to bomb the city's transport network.

They shot the man at Stockwell station in south London, close to the scene of one of Thursday's four attempted attacks.

The attempts on three underground trains and a bus unsettled commuters coming two weeks after bombs ripped through the city's transport network, killing over 50 people and injuring 700.

They also reinforced a sense of unease that after attacks in New York, Madrid and elsewhere militants linked to al Qaeda had turned their attention to Britain.

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

"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.

Police said the man was connected to their investigation but did not say how.

"(He) is still subject to formal identification and it is not yet clear whether he is one of the four people we are seeking to identify and whose pictures have been released today," they said in a statement.

Sky Television News cited security sources as saying the man was not a bomber.

Later, police arrested a man near Stockwell station, but declined to say if he was one of the four.

Another man was arrested at a train station in the city of Birmingham under anti-terrorism laws but, again, police did not say if he was suspected of involvement in the London attacks.

Explosives officers were examining two suitcases at the station, police in Birmingham said.

As in the July 7 attacks, four bombs were taken on to three trains and a bus, but this time they failed to explode properly and no one was killed.

US President George W. Bush said the United States and Britain would not be intimidated by "thugs and assassins".

He expressed solidarity in the wake of the bombings with Britain, whose Prime Minister Tony Blair remains his closest ally in Iraq and Afghanistan.

PHOTOS OF SUSPECTS

Police issued photos of the four suspects from closed-circuit television cameras and asked for help from the public in tracing them.

"It is time for the public to do what they are very good at, which is support investigations," Andy Hayman, Chief of Specialist Operations for London police told a news conference.

Commuter Teri Godly said she had stood next to the man shot dead at Stockwell station 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.

Metropolitan Police chief Ian Blair told a news conference: "The man was challenged and refused to obey police instructions."

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 website 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.

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.

SECURITY ALERTS

As forensics experts studied the trains and 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.

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 bombs.

- REUTERS