http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-
britbombs11jul11,1,4609707.story?coll=la-headlines-world
July 11, 2005
THE BOMBINGS IN LONDON
Scotland Yard Appeals to Public in Its Inquiry
# Detectives ask for cellphone images, other photos or video taken
Thursday at the attack scenes, but keep quiet on their progress.
By Tracy Wilkinson, Times Staff Writer
LONDON Across this grieving city on an incongruously sunny Sunday,
church bells tolled and religious leaders prayed for calm as work
crews pulled bodies from the wreckage of bombed subway cars crushed
deep beneath the ground.
The investigation into the bloodiest terrorist attack on British
soil and the hunt for its perpetrators proceeded "with great vigor,"
authorities said Sunday. But they remained tight-lipped about any
progress. Among other elements, investigators were attempting to
determine whether the suspected Islamic extremists who blew up three
Underground trains and a double-decker bus were British-born or
immigrants, and whether they had ties to foreign terrorist cells.
Scotland Yard's Brian Paddick said police acting under Britain's
anti-terrorism laws had arrested three men early Sunday at Heathrow
Airport. He refused, however, to describe them as suspects in the
synchronized bombings that killed at least 49 people and wounded
700. Early today, the three men were released without charge,
Associated Press reported.
Scotland Yard detectives also issued an urgent appeal for members of
the public to e-mail to the police images from their mobile
telephones taken on the morning of the attacks, as well as any other
photographs or videotapes taken near the bomb sites.
At the square where the bus exploded, the investigators expanded the
radius of their search, going by hand over every inch of nearby
streets, sidewalks and parked cars, some of which were damaged in
the blast.
John Stevens, the Metropolitan Police chief in London until his
retirement this year, said Sunday that he believed the bombers
were "almost certainly" born and raised in Britain. It is thought,
he said, that 3,000 British citizens or residents have trained in Al
Qaeda camps in Afghanistan or Pakistan.
"I'm afraid there's a sufficient number of people in this country
willing to be Islamic terrorists that they don't have to be drafted
in from abroad," Stevens wrote in the News of the World.
Police have refused to comment on several people named in news
reports as potential suspects.
But President Bush's homeland security advisor, Fran Townsend, said
Sunday that British and American authorities were looking for
Mustafa Setmarian, a Syrian alleged to be a key Al Qaeda operative
in Europe and mastermind of last year's Madrid train bombings.
"He has been a longtime and well-known bad-guy terrorist, and
involved in terrorist circles," Townsend said on "Fox News
Sunday." "The fact is, we and the British authorities are working
very hard together to try and locate him and question him."
Adding to public unease, British Home Secretary Charles Clarke
warned Sunday of additional terrorism if the suspects were not found
and arrested.
"Our fear is, of course, of more attacks until we succeed in
tracking down the gang which committed the atrocities on Thursday,"
Clarke told the BBC. "And that's why the No. 1 priority
has to be
the catching of the perpetrators."
Church leaders used their Sunday pulpits to mourn the dead and urge
calm. Representatives of four faiths a Roman Catholic cardinal, an
Anglican bishop, a chief rabbi and a Muslim imam issued a joint
statement condemning the attacks as the work of a minority that does
not represent Islam.
"It is vital," said Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O'Connor, "that with many
people feeling anger and bewilderment, [they] resist those things
which drive us apart."
Since the attacks, two mosques in Britain have burned in arson fires
and a third has been covered in anti-Muslim graffiti. At a fourth
mosque near the Aldgate Underground station, close to the site of
one of the bombings, 17 windows were broken overnight, officials of
the Islamic community said.
Led by their queen, meanwhile, Londoners made a determined show of
returning to normal.
Sunday was the culmination of ceremonies marking the end of World
War II 60 years ago, and the memories of suffering and fortitude
inevitably took on new meaning after last week's attacks.
Amid pageantry under brilliantly sunny skies, tens of thousands of
people crowded into St. James Park and along the Mall to watch a
parade of marching bands and white-haired war veterans in their 70s
and 80s, their chests bristling with medals.
Queen Elizabeth saluted the generation that had fought and endured
the war, saying its sacrifices had not been made in vain and that it
inspired citizens today.
"It does not surprise me that during the present difficult days for
London, people turn to the example set by that generation, of
resilience, humor, sustained courage, often under conditions of
great deprivation," she said.
Later, after riding pointedly in an open-topped car, she and other
members of the royal family waved from the balcony of Buckingham
Palace as World War II vintage aircraft flew over and dropped a
million bright red paper poppies on Londoners gathered for the
commemoration.
But four subway stops away, deep underground in a dank tunnel,
recovery crews continued picking through the wreckage of the train
that had suffered the greatest damage in Thursday's attacks. By
Sunday afternoon, 21 bodies had been pulled from the site between
King's Cross Station and Russell Square, police said, and the crews
were searching for additional victims, possibly crushed beneath the
carriage.
"As the searchers cut through the carriages, there may be more
[corpses] underneath," Andy Trotter, assistant chief constable of
the British Transport Police, said. "We hope and pray [there
aren't], but that may be the case."
Five teams of workers are taking turns climbing into the tunnel
nearly around the clock, Trotter said. Temperatures there have
reached 140 degrees, there is no air circulation, and the workers
are exposed to rats and the odor of decomposing flesh.
Trotter said 49 people had been confirmed dead and 49 bodies had
been recovered, including the 21 from the Piccadilly train line. But
he also said police had designated death-counseling teams for 59
cases, suggesting that a higher death toll was expected.
British police have been tight-lipped about even basic details and
have refused to clarify discrepancies in the numbers of dead and
missing.
Police representatives have begun collecting from some families
material such as hairbrushes for DNA matches with victims. One
family told The Times that investigators had been able to trace
their missing daughter's cellphone by its last call to a site where
she would have boarded the doomed double-decker bus.
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