'Bombers are still out there'

2005-07-28 13:17

London - Britain's top police officer, Ian Blair, said on Thursday there may be other terror cells capable of launching fresh attacks similar to this month's London transport bombings.

Blair, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said such attacks could come not just from three fugitives suspected of staging last week's failed bombings but from other terror cells.

"We are in a somber moment and it does remain possible that those at large will strike again," Blair told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police Authority.

"And it does also remain possible that there are other cells that are capable and intent on striking again."

Police interrogated their first captured London bombing suspect and poured a record number of officers into London Underground stations on Thursday, as chilling signs emerged of a large-scale terrorist battle plan.

Police zapped Somali-born Yasin Hassan Omar with a Taser stun gun to overpower him in a raid on Wednesday in the central English city of Birmingham.

Suspected of an attempted suicide bombing on a London Underground train near central Warren Street station on July 21, his interrogation at London's high-security Paddington Green station may be pivotal to unmasking the scale of the terror plot.

Three other suspected bombers are still on the run after the botched attempt on July 21 to blow up three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus, a mirror of the July 7 blasts that slaughtered 52 people including the four suicide attackers.

As the terror hunt gained ground on Thursday, London police arrested nine men at two properties in south London over the July 21 attacks. Police sources said none was believed to be an actual bomber.

"This is certainly the largest number of people we have had at stations, at Underground stations," London transport police spokesman, Simon Lubin, told AFP.

"I would say (the largest) ever."

Exactly one week after the attempted July 21 blasts, Lubin said the aim was both to reassure the public and deter the on-the-run bombers.

- AFP