Stun-gun police capture would-be suicide bomber

A suspected would-be suicide bomber was captured in a dramatic armed raid by British police and MI5 today.

Yasin Hassan Omar, a 24-year-old Somalian, was felled with a Taser stun gun when officers stormed the safehouse where he was hiding in Birmingham.

Around 100 homes were then evacuated as the bomb squad moved in, sparking fears that the man had been on the verge of blowing himself up, but no controlled explosion was carried out.

Omar, who apparently tried but failed to blow up a Tube train near Warren Street station in central London last Thursday, was the first of the July 21 suicide squad suspects to be caught.

As he was rushed to Paddington Green high security police station in London Scotland Yard released another CCTV image of one of his suspected accomplices.

A previous image of the man, released last week, showed him at Westbourne Park Tube station in a short-sleeved, dark blue England football shirt, on his way to attempt to blow himself up on a train near Shepherd’s Bush.

The new image showed him, wearing only a white vest, on a number 22 bus as he made his getaway after his failed suicide attempt.

Police believe he threw away the England football shirt, probably in Macfarlane Road near Wood Lane.

It may have been turned inside out and stained with mud.

He is thought to have got on the 22 bus in Wood Lane at about 1.20pm and stayed on to the end of the route at Mapleton Road, Wandsworth, near the Arndale Centre, where he got off at 2.07pm.

Head of the Anti-Terrorist Branch Peter Clarke said: “We need to know where he went after he got off the bus.”

It was also revealed today that the cell responsible for the July 7 attacks - which killed 52 commuters on the London transport network – had access to more explosives, sparking fears that more suicide attacks were planned.

The explosives were found in a car believed to have been rented by suicide bomber Shehzad Tanweer, who blew himself up on a Tube train at Aldgate on July 7.

Police discovered the car five days later at Luton railway station, where Tanweer and his fellow bombers had boarded a train to London.

In the boot were a total of 16 bomb components. They included one viable bottle-shaped nail bomb and there were also homemade high explosives flat-packed like pancakes.

The first pictures of the bloody aftermath of the July 7 bombings were also broadcast by US network ABC News in the United States.

They showed the carnage inside the train near King’s Cross on which bomber Germaine Lindsay killed himself and 26 others.

The sides, roof and floor of the train had been blown apart and wires dangled down across what remained of the mangled, twisted carriage.

In Birmingham, Omar was found at a maisonette in Heybarnes Road which had been under surveillance before the raid.

Neighbour Andy Wilkinson, an electrician, said he saw him being led out in a white forensic suit with his hands bound by plastic ties.

Mr Wilkinson, 41, said: “It was about 5.10am and all we could hear was a right racket – people trying to break a door down.

“I looked out of the window and the road was full of armed police and they had got the road closed off.

“After 10 or 15 minutes they brought a guy out. He looked like the darkest-skinned one in the photos of the four suspects released by the police - the one with the curly hair.

“They had him dressed in one of those white suits. He had plastic cuffs on the front and just after he came out, they brought a woman out and she looked Filipino.”

Mr Wilkinson said the property had been rented for a long time.

He said: “They come and go and they are not there all the time. It’s almost like it’s a letter drop. You don’t see them for three days at a time.”

Shortly after Omar was arrested three other men were held in a raid two miles away in Bankdale Road, Washwood Heath, Birmingham. Those three men are being held in Birmingham.

Neighbours said three Somalian men had been staying in the semi-detached property.

Resident Keith Stanley, 58, said the three men were taken away in handcuffs in separate vehicles.

“I don’t think anybody in the street had any contact with them, from what I saw,” he said.

“They didn’t mix and nobody appears to have spoken to them.”

Anti-terrorist police also raided two houses in Finchley and Enfield, both north London, at 6am but there were no arrests.

This evening police raided a ground floor flat at Blair House, 200 yards from Stockwell Tube station in south London.

Resident Samiullah Ainullah said four women, a boy aged eight or nine and two other smaller children were led away by police.

“They were young women. The police took the children away and then handcuffed the women.

"Then they drove all of them away,” he said.

Resident Sonia Abreeu said the women wore traditional dress which kept them almost entirely covered.

Police later covered up the front of the flat with a blue tarpaulin.

There were no bomb disposal officers in the area and residents said they had not been evacuated far from the building.

At least three suspected would-be suicide bombers from the failed July 21 attacks are still on the run. They include Muktar Said-Ibrahim, 27, whose picture has been released by police.

Detectives fear the suspects may be in possession of explosives.

They are investigating reports from neighbours that, the day after the failed attacks, some of them returned to a tower block flat they had used as a bomb factory in New Southgate, north London.

It is also understood that police have recovered a large amount of chemical compounds from a lock-up near the tower block which could have been used to make home-made explosives.

Officers believe that if the July 21 bombers had been successful, the loss of life would have been equivalent to – or possibly worse than – the attacks on July 7.