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Topic: Police kill man on London tube (Read 154 times)

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Police kill man on London tube
« on: Jul 22^nd, 2005, 6:11am »

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- Police in London have shot a man dead at a subway station, a day after bombers apparently failed to repeat the carnage of the July 7 blasts.

Unconfirmed media reports said the man shot at Stockwell station -- close to the Oval, one of four sites targeted on Thursday -- was a suicide bomber although witnesses said he did not appear to be carrying anything.

A Scotland Yard spokesperson told the Press Association: "We can confirm that just after 10 a.m. armed officers entered Stockwell Tube station.

"A man was challenged by officers and subsequently shot. London Ambulance Service attended the scene. He was pronounced dead at the scene."

One witness, Mark Whitby, told the BBC on Friday the man appeared not to be carrying anything but was wearing a thick coat that looked padded.

Whitby said an Asian man was shot five times at close range after he had jumped on a train "They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him. He's dead," witness Mark Whitby told the BBC. "He looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified."

Journalist Chris Martin said he was waiting at Stockwell station and a train pulled in when several men burst on to the platform.

"There was a lot of shouting, I thought it was football fans or something," he told the Press Association.

"There was obviously some sort of altercation going on, and then they came flying on to the platform and these guys just threw this man into the open doors of the train.

"Then I heard shots, I thought it was three but someone else said five. It sounded like a silencer gun going off, and then there was blind panic, with people shouting and screaming and just running away.

"I didn't actually see the gun, but I heard this 'bang, bang, bang.'"

London Underground said the Victoria and Northern Lines were suspended but most stations later reopened.

The shooting Friday came as police were hunting the bombers who struck London's transport network the day before.

The would-be terrorists attempted to set off another string of bombs on London Underground trains and a double-decker bus Thursday, leaving behind "significant" forensic evidence when the devices failed to detonate, the city's police commissioner said.

"Our lucky day," said a banner headline in the Daily Mirror newspaper. "Four bombs, three trains, one bus, zero deaths."

The Sun newspaper ran the banner headline: "Four suicide bombers on loose."

The aftermath resulted in some Friday morning headaches for commuters as London transport officials kept the Warren Street and the Oval stations closed.

The incidents came two weeks after a series of blasts killed 56 people, including four men identified as the bombers, on another three trains and a bus.

But Ian Blair, commissioner of London's Metropolitan Police, said it was "too early to say" whether there was a connection between the events.

"Clearly, the intention must have been to kill. You don't do this with any other intention," Blair said. But he added: "The intention of the terrorists has not been fulfilled."

Police hotly defended their safety measures amid questions over any evidence suggesting a second round of attacks was likely.

Michael Bowron, assistant police commissioner for the City of London Police, told CNN: "We're making this place as safe as we can in the circumstances, and I think it's wholly unfair to talk about intelligence failures.

"Clearly, there's a new face to terrorism, and we're working very closely with our colleagues to find out what that nature is, and how to get into it, and how to prevent it in the future."

Intelligence expert Crispin Black told CNN: "Whatever happened yesterday, I suspect wasn't what the terrorists wanted to happen. It would appear that they are under some sort of pressure. It might be to do with their bombs -- people are asking 'where are the bombing masterminds?'

"And there is another plus point to this: We have got four people on the run, and the police appear to have good forensic evidence to build up a picture from.

"My guess is that all four of these people will not be able to get away. They have no escape plan if they were suicide bombers, and so the advantage is now playing to the security and intelligence agencies."

Witnesses reported small explosions aboard Underground trains north, south and west of the city center and aboard a bus in east London early Thursday afternoon. One person was reported wounded.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the incidents were designed "to scare people and frighten them."

"I think we just have got to react calmly and continue with our business as much as possible as normal," he added.

Witnesses' accounts led to suggestions that detonators had gone off but failed to trigger bombs. The police commissioner would say only that some devices "remain unexploded," and he said police evidence technicians were going over the scenes.

"We do believe that this may represent -- may represent -- a significant breakthrough, in the sense that there is obviously forensic material at these scenes which may be very helpful to us," Blair said. "So I feel very positive about some of these developments."

But he said the investigation was still in an early stage and cautioned against the "enormous amount of speculation" concerning the incidents. Police urged anyone with photos or video taken around the time of the incidents to e-mail them to investigators.

Police took two men into custody after the blasts, including one man arrested near the prime minister's residence at 10 Downing Street. He was released without charge early Friday, while the first man, who was arrested two stops away from the Warren Street station, was released a few hours earlier.

Sour smell
Officials said all three train incidents took place at about 12:40 p.m. The first failed bombing occurred at the Oval Underground station, to the south of the city center. Police said they received a call at 12:36 p.m. (7:36 a.m. ET)

A second call, regarding the Warren Street station, came in five minutes later, authorities said.

A witness who was on a train at the Oval station said he heard something like a champagne cork popping. People then rushed into his carriage saying someone had entered the train, dropped a bag and run off.

A woman on the train said she did not hear a bang but smelled an acrid smoke that made her eyes water. She said she was in a carriage adjacent to the one affected by the reported blast, which happened as the train -- which was not crowded -- was moving between Kennington and Oval stations.

Afterwards, people began pushing themselves into her carriage. She said there was a general mood of panic. Other people too said they smelled sour smoke.

"I was reading my paper; people starting running from the next carriage, and there was screams everywhere," another passenger reported. "There was no way get out of the carriage, the door was so narrow. ... I knew it was bomb, said my prayers and waited for it to happen. That's it." (Witness accounts)

Police, who are relying on witness accounts in efforts to piece together a timeline of the incidents, could not say exactly when the call came in from the Shepherd's Bush station, on the west side.

But at about 1:10 p.m., about a half-hour after the first three devices went off, a small blast went off on the upper level of a double-decker bus.

The bus driver said he reported hearing a "bang" from the upstairs of the bus, which was near the intersection of Hackney Road and Columbia Road in east London, a company spokesman said.

Police descended on the three stations, evacuated nearby areas and cordoned off streets.

Scotland Yard said an initial search of all four sites ruled out any trace of chemical warfare agents.

Armed officers were deployed to University College Hospital, near the Warren Street station, in response to an "incident" there.

Witnesses reported that police wearing flak jackets entered the hospital with dogs, searched for a man with a red backpack and took him away without handcuffs.

The London stock market held its nerve in the wake of the blasts, closing slightly up.

CNN's Nic Robertson, Henry Schuster and Phil Hirschkorn contributed to this report.

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