Uncomfortable silence on the empty streets

IT was the moment the city of the suicide bombers remembered those killed by three of its sons.

As the noon chimes rang out across the unusually sunbathed streets of Leeds, people emerged from shops or stood where they were, self-consciously making eye contact

with each other, shuffling uncomfortably in the global spotlight thrust upon them by the actions of their fellow citizens.

It was a different story three miles away in the rundown area of Beeston which had spawned the Edgware Road bomber Shehzad Tanweer.

It was from his home on Colwyn Road that he set out on July 7 to head south and rip apart a tube carriage.

The street was eerily empty yesterday. The policemen guarding the home of the young suicide bomber’s parents, as it was stripped of evidence, stood to attention at noon.

One neighbour chose to mark the two-minute silence by noisily starting up his ice cream van and re-parking it a few feet to the left.

At the bottom of the street, a TV crew rehearsed for their next live feed while a few curious onlookers chatted in their front garden.

But then many from the mixed community, left behind by the city’s regeneration into a fashionable financial services hub, had gathered in the multi-faith centre at the top of the road.

They were determined to show the world that Tanweer did not represent them, just as he did not represent the Muslim faith.