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UK hunts 'failed' bombers
22/07/2005 07:59 - (SA)
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| A police officer escorts his dog as forces evacuate the University College Hospital, partially seen in the background, near Warren Street Underground station. (Lefteris Pitarakis, AP) |
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London - Police were urgently hunting for four presumed would-be suicide attackers on Friday after a virtually identical repeat of the July 7 London bombings only avoided fresh carnage when the explosives apparently failed to go off as planned.
The swift succession of events on Thursday lunchtime, when bombers targeted three London Underground subway trains and a bus, was a chilling echo of the July 7 attacks except that those happened in the morning rush hour.
Unlike the devastation of a fortnight before, when 56 people died and more than 700 were injured, Thursday's repeat attacks caused no casualties as the rucksack-borne bombs seemingly failed to detonate fully.
Witnesses reported hearing loud pops like guns or corks as smoke poured from the rucksacks, testimony which experts said indicated that the bombs' detonators went off but failed to ignite the main charges.
Planned suicide attacks
"Clearly the intention must have been to kill. You don't do this with any other intention," the head of London's Metropolitan Police, Ian Blair, said on Thursday.
Officers refused to give details of their investigation, but the evidence from witnesses strongly indicated that the latest attacks, like those of July 7, were planned as suicide attacks.
One London businessman recounted coming face to face with a dazed man lying on the floor on top of his smoking rucksack, seemingly in a state of shock at still being alive.
Abisha Moyo told the Daily Mail newspaper that he was on a subway train near Shepherd's Bush station in west London, the site of the first reported near-simultaneous train blasts, when he was startled by a loud bang.
He saw a young, smartly-dressed man lying face up on top of a rucksack.
"He had his eyes shut and there was a puff of smoke coming from the bag," Moyo said, recounting how the man eventually regained his senses and fled from the train.
At almost exactly the same time, passengers on trains at two other stations, Oval to the south and Warren Street in the centre, reported similar incidents.
Ivan McCracken, on the train at Warren Street, said fellow passengers described seeing a man carrying a rucksack which exploded.
"It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack. The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage."
A similar event at Oval station sparked a dramatic chase during which the young presumed bomber wriggled free from pursuers on the platform before being tackled by a florist just outside the station but escaping again.
According to a series of newspaper reports, police have recovered all four rucksack bombs, giving them a potentially huge boost in tracking down the perpetrators, as well perhaps as those who helped the four British Muslim suicide bombers who died in the July 7 attacks.
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