Suburb closed as police continue forensics

Police forensic teams continued their search for evidence this morning as large areas of the busy suburb still remained cordoned off to the public.

Ealing Broadway tube station re-opened first thing this morning although businesses and shops in its vicinity remain shut as police continued their clear-up operation.

This morning a large police presence, made up of metropolitan officers and British Transport Police, continued to clear debris from the streets and allowed only residents of nearby homes to pass through their tight cordons.

Shattered glass still littered the pavements below the North Star pub, which lost most of its windows in the explosion.

The Irish-born owner of a letting agency business which is inside the cordon condemned the bombers as ‘‘evil bastards’’.

The middle-aged man, who wished to remain anonymous said: ‘‘I have people from all over the country coming to pick up keys to flats today. There’s no possible way I can get to my offices and I haven’t been informed when I can return.

‘‘I’ve been told by police it’s extremely unlikely that I will be allowed into my offices today. I can’t contact my clients either as all their numbers are kept at work.

‘‘My business is suffering but thank God no-one was killed. These people who did this are evil bastards and shame their country.’’

There have been repeated bomb attacks around the Ealing area and local MP Stephen Pound was asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme whether he believed there was a terrorist cell based in the area.

‘‘There is a huge Irish population in west London, it has been there for over 100 years,’’ he said. ‘‘And I know many of them, I live among them and they are my friends and my neighbours.

‘‘One of the theories that people have been putting forward is that these bombs, these fertiliser bombs packed into great big blue plastic barrels, are fairly unstable.

‘‘They are very, very low-tech - we are not talking about the more sophisticated bombs being used.

‘‘Apparently there is a problem moving them long distances. That is the only evidence I have heard which suggested it could have been produced locally.’’

Former IRA member Sean Callaghan told the programme the ‘‘vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority’’ of London’s Irish population would have nothing to do with terrorism.

‘‘The problem is that geographically if you look at west London and its avenues out into the home counties and its accessibility,’’ he said.

‘‘Part of the reason with fertiliser bombs that you can’t travel very far is that the fuel oil that is used to mix with the diesel will eventually seep through. So you can’t carry them big distances.’’

Mr Callaghan said he knew the people responsible for the attack. Asked whether they lived on the British mainland, he said: ‘‘They don’t particularly live anywhere.

‘‘One of them has been missing from home now for two years and it is known that he is very heavily involved in the Real IRA.

‘‘He was involved in the IRA. He is one of those people that split away and there is no record of him now for two years and there is absolutely no doubt that he is the major person behind all of the bombs we have had.’’

The Real IRA had less than 400 members and was ‘‘not very structured’’ he said. ‘‘The security forces in Britain and Ireland, particularly the Irish Republic, had huge success against them in recent times,’’ he continued.

‘‘They are very disorganised. They have a number of core people. The problem is what they have got is a couple of dozen people who have been making bombs, who know how to make bombs, know how to do this business - it is something they have been doing for 20-odd years.’’

They were also linked with ‘‘extreme’’ terrorist groups around the world and got weapons from the former Yugoslavia, particularly Croatia, he said. And they were ‘‘being supplied in one case by a man who is wanted for war crimes’’, Mr Callaghan said.

‘‘The horrible thing we are faced with is there will always be, and it may be very small as it is in this case in reality, Irish Republicans who will use violence until they get a united Ireland. It doesn’t matter what the deal along the way is.’’