The police in London said on Saturday they’d arrested a second man in London in connection with this week’s failed bomb attacks.
Scotland Yard said the man was arrested in Stockwell, the south London neighbourhood where another suspect was detained on Friday and another man was shot dead by the police in a subway station.
The first suspect, who has not been named, was being questioned at a high-security London police station.
The police are mounting a huge manhunt for the attackers who tried to bomb three subway trains and a bus on Thursday, two weeks after similar bombings killed 52 people and four suicide bombers. The bombs in the latest attacks failed to detonate fully, and no one was injured.
On Friday police released images of four suspected attackers and appealed to the public for information.
The Metropolitan police said it had a good response to the release of the photos.
It was a day that jangled London’s jittery nerves, with repeated security alerts on the transport system and armed raids on several properties.
The startlingly clear closed-circuit TV images of the suspects stared from the front pages of British newspapers on Saturday.
”Faces of the four bombers,” said the Daily Telegraph. ”The Fugitives” said The Times, while the Daily Mail labelled them ”Human Bombs.”
One image shows a stocky man in a ”NEW YORK” sweat shirt running through a station. Another depicts a man in a white baseball cap and a T-shirt adorned with palm trees. Two others are in dark clothes, slightly obscured by a poor camera angle.
Authorities released the images on Friday as snipers and bomb squads fanned out across the nervous city.
It was another day of high tension, disruption and fear on the London underground. The union for subway and bus drivers said workers would be justified in staying away from work if the government fails to take more precautions to make the operators safe.
”I think they’re going to strike again,” Warren West (27) said of the bombers. ”I think they’re doing to London what’s happening in Iraq.”
Heavily armed officers patrolled the British capital with clear instructions to stop suicide bombers — if necessary, with a shot to the head.
”If you are dealing with someone who might be a suicide bomber, if they remain conscious, they could trigger plastic explosives or whatever device is on them,” said Mayor Ken Livingstone.
”Therefore, overwhelmingly in these circumstances, it is going to be a shoot-to-kill policy.”
Some Muslims and civil libertarians expressed concern about Friday’s shooting of a man — described by witnesses as being of South Asian appearance and wearing a heavy padded coat — in Stockwell subway station. Police chased him into a subway car, pinned him to the ground and shot him in the head and torso, an eyewitness said.
”They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him,” passenger Mark Whitby told the BBC. ”He looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified.”
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair said the shooting was ”directly linked” to the investigation.
”The man who was shot was under police observation because he had emerged from a house that was itself under observation because it was linked to the investigation of yesterday’s incidents,” police said in a statement. ”He was then followed by surveillance officers to the station. His clothing and his behavior at the
station added to their suspicions.”
Stockwell is just one stop away from Oval station, site of one of Thursday’s four failed attacks.
Muslims have voiced renewed concerns about a backlash following the latest attacks. One of London’s largest mosques was briefly evacuated on Friday after a bomb threat, and more than 100 alleged revenge attacks have been reported since the July 7 suicide attacks.
Police also investigated an apparent attempt to set fire to the home of Jermaine Lindsay, one of the suspected suicide bombers.
Inayat Bunglawala, spokesperson for the Muslim Council of Britain, said he had spoken to nervous Muslims since Friday’s shooting.
”I have just had one phone call saying ‘What if I was carrying a rucksack?”’ he said.
Thursday’s bombs contained homemade explosives that only partly detonated, the police said, adding that the attacks bore resemblance to the July 7 attacks, also on three subway trains and a bus. It was not clear if the explosives were of the same type.
A statement posted on Friday on an Islamic website in the name of an al-Qaeda-linked group claimed responsibility for Thursday’s attacks. Authorities, however, were skeptical. The group, Abu Hafs al Masri Brigades, has also claimed responsibility for the July 7 bombings — as it did for the 2003 New York City blackout and many other events. – Sapa-AP