Thursday’s attacks in London bore similarities to the July 7 blasts in that they were also implemented by suicide bombers, but in the fresh attacks, the terrorists ran away when the explosives failed to ignite, reported British media on Friday.
London underground passenger Abisha Moyo told the Daily Mail he heard a bang, turned and saw a man lying on floor of the carriage.
First, he thought the man had been shot, but then he noticed that the 20-year-old was lying on a smoking backpack. Other passengers pulled the emergency brake, and the man fled over the tracks of the underground.
”I stared into the bomber’s eyes,” Moyo told the Daily Mail.
A passenger on another of the three targeted underground trains, Gary Carter, reported to the Daily Express that he saw an explosion, and the man wearing a backpack where the blast came from looked ”frightened” and fled, leaving the backpack. Three people tried to prevent him, but couldn’t stop him.
Renewed threat of terrorism
Investigators searched on Friday for fingerprints, DNA and other forensic evidence collected from attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus.
Media reports said police also were hunting the would-be bombers, after witnesses described seeing men fleeing several of the attack scenes. Police would not comment on the search for suspects.
Jittery commuters — already facing cutbacks in service from the last attack — faced more underground closures as they adjusted to a renewed threat of terrorism.
”We can’t minimise incidents such as this,” British Prime Minister Tony Blair said. ”They’re done to scare people, to frighten them and make them worried.”
Though the devices in Thursday’s attacks were either small or faulty, and authorities said the only reported injury turned out to be an asthma attack, the nearly simultaneous lunch-hour blasts agitated a capital on edge since the July 7 bombings that killed 52 people and four suspected suicide bombers.
Police detained two men — one near the scene of one attack and another near Blair’s Downing Street residence — but both were later released without charge.
The metropolitan police appealed for witnesses to return to the scenes to give statements to teams of officers. The force also set up a website to receive amateur video and cellphone footage of the attacks and their aftermath.
Wary commuters on their way to work on Friday faced significant disruptions. The agency that runs London’s transportation system, Transport for London, said the three affected subway stations remained closed and service was suspended on all or part of several lines. Several other lines have been disrupted since the attacks two weeks ago.
Authorities said it was too early to determine whether the attacks were carried out by the same organisation as the July 7 blasts — or whether they were linked to al-Qaeda.
”Clearly, the intention must have been to kill,” police Commissioner Ian Blair said during a brief news conference.
”You don’t do this with any other intention. And I think the important point is that the intention of the terrorists has not been fulfilled.”
Harried passengers fled the three underground stations in the centre, south and west of the city at midday, sprinting barefoot after leaving their shoes behind in the scramble. Some witnesses on the underground reported hearing a pop like a champagne cork burst; bus passengers reported a bang on the upper level before the blast blew out windows.
Business analyst Abisha Moyo (28) described hearing a bang and seeing a man lying atop a smouldering knapsack on the floor of his subway carriage at Warren Street station in central London.
”He had his eyes shut and there was a puff of smoke coming from the bag,” Moyo was quoted as saying by the Daily Mail newspaper.
”Some girls started screaming, the emergency cable was pulled and everyone started running away from him towards the front of the train.”
Firefighters and police with bomb-sniffing dogs sealed off nearby city blocks and evacuated rows of restaurants, pubs and offices. Buckingham Palace said Queen Elizabeth II was informed.
”When I got home, my hands were shaking,” said 24-year-old commuter Lisa Chilley, who uses the targeted Oval station. ”I’m panicking like hell. It’s just too close to home.”
Britain’s Press Association news agency quoted unidentified sources as saying detectives were working on the belief that the bombs were not properly primed — a factor that limited the damage.
Though authorities did not specify how many of the devices exploded, Paul Beaver, an independent defence expert, said a source told him it appeared that two devices detonated but the other two did not. Detonators on commercial and military devices are often faulty, he said.
”These attacks don’t look like they were a hallmark of any one group,” Beaver told The Associated Press. ”They don’t fit into any clear patterns that we know of, except they were timed.”
The police commissioner said forensic evidence collected from the crime scenes could provide a ”significant break” in the latest attacks.
Hospital scare
An armed police unit entered University College hospital shortly after the midday incidents. Sky News TV reported that police were searching for a man with a blue shirt with wires protruding from his pocket.
By late on Thursday, the hospital said in a statement that police had completed a search of the facility, but added that three small rooms in an unoccupied part of the complex had been cordoned off.
Police inquiries were continuing at the hospital, which is near Warren Street.
The incidents paralleled the July 7 blasts, which involved explosions at three underground stations simultaneously starting at 8.50am, followed by a bomb going off on a bus. All the explosions occurred in the city centre.
Thursday’s incidents were more spread out and occurred during the lunch hour — beginning at about 12.38pm.
The attacks, which targeted trains near the Warren Street, Oval and Shepherd’s Bush stations, did not shut down the subway system, only three of its lines. The double-decker bus had its windows blown out on Hackney Road in east London.
At Warren Street station, witness Ivan McCracken told Sky News that he spoke to an Italian man who was comforting a woman after the evacuation.
”He said that a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion, but enough to blow open the rucksack,” McCracken said. ”The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage.”
Subway passengers smelled an odour like burning rubber and began rushing through the cars of a moving train to get away from it. The Victoria Line train entered Warren Street station seconds later and hundreds of people streamed out on to the street, eyewitnesses told The Associated Press.
At the east London site near the bus explosion, firefighters and police, some with bomb-sniffing dogs, sealed off a city block of mostly cafés, restaurants, a few shops and blocks of apartments.
Search for cleric’s aide
Thursday’s incidents came as Pakistani intelligence officials said authorities sought the former aide of a radical cleric in Britain in connection with the attacks two weeks ago.
British investigators asked Pakistani authorities to search for Haroon Rashid Aswat, who reportedly had been in close contact with the suicide bombers just before the July 7 attacks, the intelligence officials said on condition of anonymity.
Aswat (31) reportedly was once an associate of Abu Hamza al-Masri, the radical imam who is awaiting trial in Britain on charges of incitement to murder. Al-Masri also is wanted in the United States on charges of trying to establish a terrorist training camp in the US state of Oregon; involvement in hostage-taking in Yemen; and funding terror training in Afghanistan.
Authorities are investigating whether the London bombing suspects, three of whom were of Pakistani origin, received training or other assistance from militants in that country.
One of the July 7 bombers, Shahzad Tanweer (22), is suspected of visiting a madrassa linked with militants in Lahore that has become a focus of the inquiry.
Pakistan has pledged to curb religious extremism amid international concerns that Islamic schools, or madrassas, are promoting extremism.
World leaders rally
World leaders have lashed out at the bombers behind the latest attacks on London, vowing to unite against terrorism and praising Londoners’ grit in the face of fear.
Tetchy relations with France were put to one side, traditional allies such as the US, Australia and Ireland rallied behind Londoners, and the European Commission vowed to press for anti-terrorism measures across the bloc.
”This second attack unfortunately confirms that terrorism constitutes a permanent threat from which nobody is safe,” the European Commission said in a statement.
”It is also vital to focus on measures which aim at preventing terrorism and particularly preventing young people from becoming radicalised.”
The European Union has a strategy to fight terrorism, it said.
”We need to implement this without any delay.”
The US expressed ”shock, outrage, horror at yet another senseless and evil act”.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, speaking in Israel ahead of talks on the Middle East conflict, said she was confident that Londoners would react to the latest incidents with the same resilience they had shown two weeks ago.
”There are obviously those who would try to terrorise populations and free peoples everywhere,” Rice said.
”The British people have impressed everyone with their strength and resolve and I am certain they will continue to do the same,” she added.
New York ordered random bag searches on the city’s subway system on Thursday.
”We just live in a world where, sadly, these kinds of security measures are necessary,” mayor Michael Bloomberg said in announcing the new police searches of subway passengers’ backpacks and packages.
At the White House, spokesperson Scott McClellan said US President George Bush was kept closely informed about the new bomb attacks.
French President Jacques Chirac, who had swept aside Franco-British squabbles over the future of the EU to support Blair after the deadly July 7 attacks on London, reiterated France’s solidarity with Britain.
”I wish to express to the British people and to Prime Minister Tony Blair the solidarity and support of France, and I want to reiterate our determination to fight terrorism together,” he said during an official visit in the Malagasy capital, Antananarivo.
King Mohammed VI of Morocco, whose country was hit by deadly urban bomb blasts two years ago, said the latest attacks were ”criminal, cowardly acts that go against the noble religious ideals of peace, tolerance, living together and the sanctity of the right to life”.
Turkish Minister of Foreign Affairs Abdullah Gul, whose country has also been targeted in bomb attacks, said ”we condemn terrorism wherever it strikes and whatever its goals are”.
And Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was lunching with Blair during an official visit to London when the news broke, said his country will stand steadfast with Britain.
”The determination of the British people to continue with their daily lives is something that we have always seen as one of the great characteristics of the people of this remarkable country,” he told reporters, standing beside Blair in Number 10 Downing Street.
”Terrorism is about the perverted use of an ideology for evil intent and for evil objectives,” said Howard, a close British ally in the Iraq war.
”Canadians stand united with the British people and people around the world in denouncing all acts of violence and terrorism,” said Anne McLellan, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness.
McLellan said she was ”disturbed to hear of a second incident involving London’s transit system, so closely following the tragic events of two weeks ago”.
”Our thoughts continue to be with Londoners during this difficult time,” she said.
Other countries railed against the attackers.
Irish Minister of Foreign Affairs Dermot Ahern condemned the attempt to ”strike fear and terror” into the community.
Ahern said he has no doubt the British government will actively pursue those who carried out the attacks and bring them to justice.
”Those responsible should know that they will not deter the international community from combating terrorism vigorously and uncompromisingly wherever it occurs.”
Czech President Vaclav Klaus called the attacks ”barbaric, inhuman and insidious”.
Spain announced it was reinforcing its border controls following the London attacks. — Sapa-AP, Sapa-AFP, Sapa-DPA