British police were hopeful on Tuesday that the trail of evidence uncovered so far would lead them closer to the fugitive London bombers, after naming two of the wanted men.
Detectives were continuing a thorough search of a flat north of the city linked to the duo on the run.
Police named Muktar Said Ibrahim (27) also known as Muktar Mohammed Said, and Yasin Hassan Omar (24) as two of the four suspects behind last Thursday’s failed bomb attacks.
Ibrahim was named as the attacker who tried to blow up a number 26 bus as it drove through east London, while Omar is thought to have endeavoured to explode his rucksack-carried device on a London underground subway train.
Officers were continuing to search a 1960s tower block flat in Southgate, a suburb north of London after raiding the property on Monday as their investigation.
The flat was dubbed ”Terror tower” and ”Bomb factory on ninth floor” by newspapers as fears grew the property was used to make the bombs intended to explode in Thursday’s attacks.
Police in chemical suits took away material for forensic examination and British newspapers linked the flat to both wanted men.
”Searches are continuing and police are still at the scene,” said a spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan police on Tuesday.
The pair — along with two more would-be suicide bombers who targeted other underground lines — fled after the main charges in their bombs failed to detonate.
Police said on Monday they had arrested two more men in connection with the attempted bombings, bringing the total held to five, though none was believed to be one of the bombers.
Neighbour Sammy Jones (33) said she knew Yasin Hassan Omar simply as Omar, and had seen Ibrahim at the Southgate flat with an African man called George over the last two years.
She said Omar never wore Western clothing, unlike in the closed-circuit television image of him on the day of the bombing, and that the two suspects were in and out of the flat at peculiar hours.
”Then about three weeks ago I saw Muktar and George coming in and out of the flat with boxes,” Tuesday’s Daily Mail newspaper quoted her as saying.
”They were in and out for quite a while with about 50 boxes. When I asked them about it they said they were decorating and it was wallpaper stripper. That was the last time I saw Mukhtar.”
Local councillor David Schofield said: ”A friend of mine wanted to use the lift at the flats a few weeks ago but couldn’t because Ibrahim and his friends were carrying up dozens of boxes.”
London has been on high security alert since July 7, when four men named later as British Muslims, three of Pakistani origin, killed themselves and 52 other people on three underground trains and a bus in different parts of the capital.
Police have gathered a wealth of clues from the unexploded bombs the men left behind from the second bomb operation two weeks later, but warn that their biggest-ever manhunt has become a ”race against time” to find the bombers before they strike again.
Fears were high that a fifth member of the gang may be at large after a device bearing ”clear similarities” to the four failed bombs placed on London’s transport network was found on Saturday in woodland to the west of the British capital.
The focus of the manhunt had switched to the nondescript Southgate flat from Stockwell in south London, where a young Brazilian electrician who was shot eight times by anti-terror police in a major error in the hunt for the attackers.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair said he was ”desperately sorry” for the incident.
Despite the death of Jean Charles de Menezes (27) who was chased through Stockwell underground subway station in south London before being shot repeatedly in the head by officers who feared he was a suicide bomber, police have warned that a shoot-to-kill policy remains in place.
”We are all desperately sorry for the death of an innocent person, and I understand entirely the feelings of the young man’s family,” Blair said on Monday.
It was important also to understand that ”had the circumstances been different and for example, this had turned out to be a terrorist and they had failed to take that action, they would have been criticised the other way,” Blair noted.
Brazil’s Foreign Minister Celso Amorim said, after holding talks in Britain about the shooting, that the fight against terrorism must respect human rights.
At a joint press conference on Monday with British counterpart Jack Straw, Amorim said Brazil ”understands the plight” faced by Britain following the two sets of bomb attacks.
However, he also stressed ”combatting terrorism has to be done with full respect of human rights”, adding that terrorists would benefit if it did not.
Britain’s Independent Police Complaints Commission has opened an inquest into the Brazilian’s death. – Sapa-AFP