Cops hunt London bombers
2005-07-08 07:57
London - A massive hunt was under way on Friday for the bombers who blew up a double-decker bus and wrought carnage in underground trains in London, slaughtering at least 37 people and injuring more than 700.
Prime Minister Tony Blair promised to track down the perpetrators of the worst terror attack ever in Britain.
"There, of course, will now be the most intense police and security service action to make sure we bring those responsible to justice," the grim-faced British leader told the nation in a televised address.
Scotland Yard spokesperson Alan Crookwood said the investigation was "a very high priority."
Three explosions tore apart packed underground trains and one peeled the top off a number 30 double-decker bus in 56 minutes of morning mayhem on Thursday.
Although anti-terrorist investigators said it was too early to speculate, several British newspapers were convinced that the attack on the bus had been the work of a suicide bomber.
"The number 30 suicide bomber," said the Daily Mirror tabloid, the theme taken up by several other dailies who quoted passengers that survived as saying they had seen a dark-skinned man rummaging in a bag seconds before the blast.
Blood-spattered and crying, thousands of survivors of the four attacks staggered into the streets.
The entire underground rail network was shut down and terror replaced the euphoria of a day earlier when London was named the host of the 2012 Olympic Games.
The synchronised blasts, detonated without warning, occurred within minutes of each other, in an eerie echo of last year's Madrid train bombings, blamed on Islamic extremists.
British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said Osama bin Laden's global terrorist network, al-Qaeda, was likely responsible.
"These outrages bear the hallmarks of al-Qaeda related terrorist cells," Straw said.
The country reacted with defiance.
"They should not and they must not succeed," said Blair, who interrupted a Group of Eight summit in Scotland to fly London for a meeting of the government's emergency committee and to speak to the country.
"When they try to intimidate us we will not be intimidated. When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods we will not be changed. When they try to divide our people or weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our resolve will hold firm."
Witnesses related horrific scenes.
"There was blood dripping off them, they were all white."
The bus explosion also caused mayhem.
"It was terrible. The bus went to pieces. There were so many bodies on the floor," said Ayobami Bello, 46, a security guard at the nearby London School of Tropical Hygiene and Medicine.
A previously unknown group which calls itself the Organisation of al-Qaeda Jihad in Europe claimed it caused the blasts and threatened similar attacks against Italy, Denmark and other "Crusader" states with troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.
- AFP