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British police officers conduct searches outside Waterloo train station in central London, Monday July 2, 2007. Meanwhile, British police were sifting through large amounts of evidence from the vehicles and from video surveillance of the scenes where two car bombs failed to explode in central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee into the Glasgow airport's entrance the following day. Police have arrested five suspects while conducting raids across a country on its highest level of alert and are searching for others. None of them have been identified, but British officials have said they are hunting for what they called an al-Qaida-linked network behind the three attempted terrorist attacks. [AP] |
Vigilance was already high less than a week before the anniversary of the deadly July 7, 2005, London transit bombing. Those were largely carried out by local Muslims, exacerbating ethnic tensions in Britain.
In the latest attacks, two car bombs failed to explode in central London on Friday and two men rammed a Jeep Cherokee loaded with gas cylinders into the entrance of Glasgow International Airport on Saturday.
The unidentified driver of the Jeep, which burst into flames, is being treated for serious burns at Paisley's Royal Alexandra Hospital in Glasgow, where he is under arrest by armed police and where the Iraqi doctor reportedly worked. A 27-year-old man also was arrested at the airport and was being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.
Police said one man arrested in Glasgow is Bilal Abdulla.
According to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad. Staff at Royal Alexandra Hospital said one suspect was a doctor of Middle Eastern or Iraqi origin who worked there.
A second man arrested late Saturday on a highway in central England is Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, according to a police official who was not authorized to publicly disclose the details and spoke on condition of anonymity. The medical register said Asha trained in Jordan, gaining a medical degree in 2004.
Media reports said Asha worked at North Staffordshire Hospital near the town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, where the police searched a house on Sunday. The hospital refused comment.
In Jordan, Asha's brother Ahmed told The Associated Press he had heard the media reports and said his 26-year-old sibling "is not a Muslim extremist, and he's not a fanatic."
"It's nonsense because he has no terror connections," he said.
Daniel Gardiner, a rental agent whose company leased a Glasgow-area home searched by police, said authorities contacted his firm 10 minutes before the airport attack, saying they had tracked phone records from it linked to the foiled London car bomb attacks.
"A card was put through one of my colleague's door, asking if we would contact them," he said.
"A couple of hours later, they (police) came back to us with a name, and we were able to trace their records," he said. "The police wanted to know why we had dialed a certain phone number. They had the phone records from the situation down in London."
Ian Thomson, who lives on the quiet suburban street, said the people who lived in the house kept irregular hours: "I would see at least one of them with a stethoscope and just assumed they were doctors working shifts."
Gardiner said his tenant — the only person listed as living in the house — was thought to be a doctor at the Royal Alexandra Hospital. A controlled explosion was carried out Sunday on a car left at the hospital that police said was linked to the airport attack.
A British government security official said a loose U.K.-wide network appeared to be behind the London and Glasgow attacks, but investigators were struggling to pin down suspects' identities.
Security in London was highly visible Monday morning, with long lines of cars forming behind police checkpoints on London Bridge. Concrete slabs were in place protecting the Wimbledon tennis tournament.
In a statement to the House of Commons, Smith urged Britons to remain united.
"Let us be clear: terrorists are criminals, whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds," she said. "Terrorists attack the values that are shared by all law-abiding citizens.
"It is through our unity that the terrorists will eventually be defeated."
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