Four London bomb suspects arrested

WITHOUT firing a shot, police raiding apartments yesterday in London and Rome rounded up the last of the four suspected attackers from the failed July 21 transit bombings in Britain.

Officers also detained a man suspected of being the so-called fifth bomber.

Two of the suspects were arrested in west London, near the trendy Notting Hill neighbourhood, following raids by heavily armed police wearing gas masks and lobbing stun grenades.

Video of the arrests broadcast by ITV News/Daily Mail in London showed two men identified as bombing suspects stripped to the waist and emerging at gunpoint on a balcony of an apartment after police apparently fired tear gas inside.

Tracing mobile phone calls across Europe, police in Rome arrested Osman Hussain, a naturalised British citizen from Somalia who reportedly fled London and stopped in Milan and Bologna en route to the Italian capital.

With those arrests, as well as that of Yasin Hassan Omar on Wednesday in Birmingham, authorities believe they have captured all four men whose photos they released following last week’s botched bombings.

The suspected fifth bomber was arrested in Tavistock Crescent, west London, near to the scene of the Notting Hill raids.

So far, about two dozen people have been arrested in connection with the attacks last week in which bombs in backpacks failed to detonate fully on three subway trains and a double-decker bus. Those attacks caused no injuries, unlike the July 7 attacks in London that killed 56 people.

Despite progress made in the investigation of the bombings, “the threat remains and is very real”, said Peter Clarke, head of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-terrorist branch.

The British police operation was carried out in at least two locations in Notting Hill about half a kilometre apart.

One of those arrested was believed to be Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, who allegedly tried to blow himself up on a double-decker bus in east London. Ibrahim, also known as Muktar

Mohammed Said, came to Britain in 1990 from Eritrea.

The suspect arrested with him identified himself as Ramzi Mohammed, Mr Clarke said, and added that Mohammed was the suspect shown wearing a “New York” sweatshirt and believed responsible for the attempted bombing near Oval Tube station.

Hussain is suspected of targeting a subway train near the Shepherd’s Bush station.

In yesterday’s raids in west London, Sky News broadcast a video of two men in light blue bodysuits designed to preserve evidence leading away a man in a white bodysuit, shielding his face.

Police also arrested two women at the Liverpool Street train station in central London yesterday and evacuated the area.

Scotland Yard declined to comment on the arrest in Zambia of a British man sought in connection with the July 7 bombings.

British investigators reportedly believe Haroon Rashid Aswat, 31, had been in telephone contact with some of the four suicide attackers.