London cops close in on bombers
2005-07-12 07:56
London - British police are on the verge of identifying one person they believe was involved in the bomb attacks which killed at least 52 people in London, a report said on Tuesday.
The Financial Times, which cited an unnamed European official involved in international efforts to find the bombers, said progress had been made towards naming who was responsible for a blast on a bus on Thursday morning.
The bus explosion was one of four co-ordinated bombings, the others on London Underground subway trains, which caused carnage in the morning rush hour.
"I think we are going to see photographs of one or more suspects being posted within days," the official told the paper.
Separately, The Times newspaper reported that forensic pathologists are paying particularly close attention to two bodies found inside the wrecked bus to see whether one of them might have been the bomber.
"There are two bodies which have to be examined in great detail because they appear to have been holding the bomb or sitting on top of it," a "senior police source" told the paper.
"One of those might turn out to be the bomber."
Some experts have speculated that the bus bomb might have gone off accidentally as the terrorist carried it, possibly to another Underground station.
Another report in the Daily Mirror said that police had placed up to 100 suspects considered the "most likely" to have been involved in the attack under surveillance.
An unnamed intelligence source told the paper that among these were British residents known to have trained in al-Qaeda-type camps overseas.
Up to 100 "will be vigorously looked at in a serious surveillance operation", the source was quoted as saying.
Meanwhile in the United States, NBC television reported that British investigators have found fingerprints on bomb materials from the London attacks, adding that at least four operatives are believed to have been involved.
British intelligence told United States counterparts that investigators have picked up fingerprints from bomb materials.
Law enforcement officials said investigators suspect the bombers congregated at the King's Cross Tube station, then set out to plant the devices, NBC said.
According to The Times, a single bomb maker using military-grade explosives was most likely responsible for manufacturing all the bombs used in the attacks.
Similar components have been found by police at all four bomb sites, the newspaper said without citing a source.
Investigators believe that the materials used to make the rucksack-based bombs were manufactured using smuggled, military-grade explosives, possibly brought in from the Balkans, the paper said.
"The nature of the explosives appears to be military, which is very worrying," Superintendent Christophe Chaboud, head of France's anti-terrorism police, who is helping the London inquiry, was quoted as saying.