Bomb police step up hunt one week on from outrage

Police hunting the missing members of the London terror bomb gang were leafleting commuters at bus, tube and railway stations across the capital today in the hope of uncovering key witnesses.

One week on from the bombings, Scotland Yard officers were stationed at key locations around the capital’s transport network in a bid to find anyone who could have seen the bombers at the four blast sites.

Appeal posters have also been put up around London in the hope of tracking down other vital witnesses who have yet to contact police.

As police stepped up their search for witnesses, intensive efforts were underway behind the scenes to trace the missing members of the terror cell who carried out last Thursday’s outrage.

Detectives are hunting a fifth British-born suspect – believed to have masterminded the plot – who is thought to have arrived in Britain last month and left the country just days before the attacks.

They are also searching for an Egyptian chemistry student who has recently gone missing from his home in Leeds.

There was another development last night when armed police raided an address in Buckinghamshire which is thought to be linked to a car used by the terrorists. Forensic experts were continuing to search the property today.

It has also emerged that two of the bombers were cautioned by police for minor offences last year and it is also understood that one of the gang was looked at, but not arrested, during a major anti-terrorist operation in 2004.

Today, colleagues at a primary school where one of the bombers worked spoke of their horror at discovering what he had done.

Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, the father of a young child, worked at the school between March 2001 and December 2004 as a learning mentor.

Sarah Balfour, head of Hillside Primary School, in the Beeston area of Leeds, said staff and pupils were “extremely shocked”.

Europe will fall silent for two minutes at noon today in a mark of respect for the 52 people so far known to have been killed and the 700 injured in the strikes.

Last night’s raids at a 1930s semi-detached house in Northern Road, Aylesbury, followed the emergence of further details about the four suicide bombers and their seemingly ordinary lives.

Neighbours of the killers in West Yorkshire have spoken of their shock and disbelief, as Christian and Muslim leaders came together in Leeds to condemn the bombings and call for calm.

The Prince of Wales, writing in today’s Daily Mirror, said it was the “duty of every true Muslim” to condemn the bombings and called on them to “root out those among them who preach and practise such hatred and bitterness“.

Police are investigating the possibility that at least three of the bombers drove from their base in West Yorkshire to Luton, to travel together by train to the capital.

The fifth man police are hunting is thought to be the bomb-maker or the orchestrator of the attacks, it is believed he is also a British Muslim with Pakistani heritage.

He is reported to have previous involvement in terrorist operations and may have links with al Qaida followers in America. The man is understood to be in his 30s, British and of Pakistani origin.

The family of the man who will go down in history as Britain’s first suicide bomber said yesterday they could not comprehend why he had become a mass murderer.

Shehzad Tanweer, 22, was an outwardly ordinary young British man, a university graduate who studied sports science and loved cricket and football.

His father owns a fish and chip shop in Beeston, Leeds where he had lived all his life.

On July 7 he was the first of the four-strong suicide team to die when his bomb exploded on a London Underground train near Aldgate station.

Seconds later his friend Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, blew himself up on a train near Edgware Road and another friend died in a blast on a train near King’s Cross.

The King’s Cross bomber was named today by former neighbours as Ejaz Fiaz, thought to be 33, and a former Leeds resident now living in Luton.

Hasib Hussain, 18, the fourth bomber, was from the Leeds suburb of Holbeck and killed himself in an explosion on the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square. All four were British with Pakistani ancestry.

A sixth man, thought to be called Magdi El-Nashar and a 33-year-old PhD biology student, today emerged as another person possibly linked to last Thursday’s attacks.

The Egyptian-born chemistry PhD student is thought to have handed over his flat in the Leeds suburb of Burley to the gang – possibly to the fifth man. He vanished days before the bombings and it is not known if he was aware of the plot.

Police yesterday secured an extension from Bow Street Magistrates Court to continue holding a 29-year-old relation of one of the bombers until Saturday.

The man, who was arrested in raids in Leeds on Tuesday, is being held at Paddington Green police station in London on suspicion of the “commission, instigation or preparation of acts of terrorism“.

He is thought to be the brother of Fiaz and a father of three.