British Police Kill Man in Subway a Day After Bomb Attempts - New York Times

British Police Kill Man in Subway a Day After Bomb Attempts - New York TimesJuly 22, 2005
British Police Kill Man in Subway a Day After Bomb Attempts
By ALAN COWELL

LONDON, July 22 - One day after four attempted bombings on London's transport system, police officers fatally shot a man at a subway station today, the authorities said.

A witness told the BBC the man had been pursued by plainclothes police officers who fired five shots at close range.

"I saw them offload five shots into the person on the floor," an eyewitness, Mark Whitby, told BBC television. "I saw them kill a man."

Mr. Whitby said the man was shot by the officers as he ran into the train from the station. "He looked out of place," Mr. Whitby said, adding that the man was wearing a heavy winter coat in summer.

Police were hunting for bombers today after Thursday's apparent attempt to bomb London's transport network.

On July 7, suicide bombers killed 52 people in attacks on London's transport system. The four bombers also died. In a statement today, carried by the Press Association news agency, the police said: "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."

A passenger at Stockwell station, Briony Coetsee, told the Press Association today, "We were on the tube when we suddenly heard someone say 'get out, get out' and then we heard gunshots someone was shooting."

Other witnesses said a man leaped over the barriers at the station pursued by plainclothes officers. Several witnesses said police caught up with the man and pushed him to the ground. Police did not immediately offer a detailed account today.

Stockwell station is in the same area south of the Thames River as Oval station, one of the targets of Thursday's attacks. Two subway lines the Victoria and Northern lines were suspended after the shooting, plunging London's transport system once more into chaos.

The police did not confirm television reports today that the dead man was suspected of being one of the assailants who attempted to set off explosives on three subway trains and a doubledecker bus on Thursday. Those bombs failed to explode and no one was injured.

The lunchtime attacks on Thursday were "pretty close to simultaneous," said Sir Ian Blair, the chief of the Metropolitan Police.

Senior police officials and witnesses reported that after the bombs had failed to detonate, the bombers then abandoned their backpacks and fled from the scene. The officials said it was only the detonators on the devices that went off, making sounds like firecrackers. The unexploded devices could provide important clues to the identity of the attackers; two British officials said they believed the explosives contained the same materials as the earlier bombs.

No one was wounded, officials said, though one person sought treatment for an asthma attack. "The intention must have been to kill," Sir Ian said, "and I think the important point is that the intention of the terrorists has not been fulfilled."

The attacks spread chaos and confusion as the three subway stations were evacuated, a No. 26 bus stopped short in Bethnal Green, East London, after an explosion on its upper deck, and parts of the London subway and road system came to a halt. In one instance, witnesses spoke of a panic after passengers smelled something burning on one subway car and rushed onto another to escape it, abandoning bags and shoes.

By early evening, there was no indication of who was responsible, or whether it was a copycat assault or a new attack by the same cell that struck July 7.

In rapid-fire sequence, the city relived the early moments of the first attacks on July 7, with the police cordoning off areas, sirens wailing and passengers pouring out of subway stations. As the day wore into a summer's evening, hundreds of people walked home because of closed subway lines and police cordons across bus routes. The images seemed hauntingly familiar after the attacks two weeks ago.

In several parts of London, the police kept people far from the sites of the attacks. London Underground, which runs the subway, said Thursday night that the combination of attacks on July 7 and Thursday had left only five of the city's 12 subway lines operating normally. The other seven were either suspended completely or operating with some sections closed.

Two people were arrested Thursday, but Scotland Yard officials said in the evening that neither arrest was related to the bombing attempts.

Asked if the bombers had escaped, a Scotland Yard official, who declined to be identified by name, said there had been "no arrests so far in this investigation."

In a statement on Thursday, the police appealed for witnesses to come forward at any one of four centers near the locations of the bombings. "We are keen to speak to anyone who may have seen anything," the statement said. "The public are our eyes and ears," it added, urging people to call in any information.

The police were also scrutinizing video footage from security cameras to help in identifying the suspects.

Earlier, television images showed a man in dark clothing lying on the sidewalk on Whitehall near Downing Street, where the prime minister's office is situated. Two armed police officers in bulletproof vests approached the man, and one of them kept him in the sights of an assault rifle as he raised his hands aloft then wriggled free of a backpack he was wearing.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, speaking Thursday after an emergency meeting of his security and intelligence chiefs, said, "We can't minimize incidents such as this because they obviously have been serious in four different places, as we know."

"I think all I would like to say is this: We know why these things are done," Mr. Blair said. "They are done to scare people and to frighten them, to make them anxious and worried." He had also met Thursday with his Australian counterpart, John Howard.

At first, Sir Ian, the Scotland Yard chief, repeated the same message as on July 7, telling Londoners to remain where they were.

But after more than three hours of paralysis in many parts of the city, he said: "The situation is now coming fully under control. We have all four scenes of the incidents confirmed and confined. We have no evidence at the present time, nothing to indicate any kind of attack which involves chemicals or anything else."

Sir Ian declined to tie the attacks directly to Al Qaeda, as the British authorities did in the immediate aftermath of the July 7 attacks.

An e-mail message from Ken Knightly, the commissioner of the London Fire Brigade, to brigade personnel on Thursday said the explosives were "conventional," adding, "The only chemicals involved were those used to the make the explosive mixture." A copy of the message was seen by The New York Times.

The subway bombings two weeks ago were closely synchronized to within seconds of one another, and the bus bomb followed roughly one hour later. The subway bombs on Thursday seemed to be spaced minutes rather than seconds apart.

After the blasts on July 7, the police concluded that four men aged between 18 and 30 had blown themselves up with bombs on the three subway trains and the bus. Since then, investigators have followed leads to northern England, Egypt and Pakistan, but there have been no further arrests.

The police had warned since then that Britain was at risk of further attacks, but Londoners had generally emerged from the shadow of the first attacks and had returned to the subway, which is known here as the Tube. "Until today, Londoners had started to move on," said Simon Hughes, a Liberal Democratic member of Parliament.

Initial accounts of the lunchtime bombing attempts seemed confused.

At Oval station, on the Northern Line, a police officer who spoke in anonymity according to police regulations, said a man threw a package or backpack into a subway car just before the train moved off. While the train was still in the station, "the device exploded," the officer said, and the attacker escaped.

"As you can imagine, the train was pretty packed," the officer said. "It was lunchtime, and it was pretty surprising that no one was hurt."

At the Shepherd's Bush station, where the subway line runs above ground, there was no immediate indication from the police about what had happened.

At Warren Street, Ivan McCracken, a passenger, told Sky News that he had heard from a fellow passenger that "a man was carrying a rucksack, and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack." That reflected similar accounts from emergency workers.

On board the No. 26 bus - a red double-decker like the No. 30 bus blown up on July 7 - there were conflicting reports about the intensity of a reported explosion. Mark Bond, a passenger, said in a broadcast interview that there had been a noise from the rear of the bus.

"Everyone froze for a couple of minutes," he said. "Then everyone just rushed out. It can hit anyone at any time anywhere. I feel very unsafe."

At the Oval station, some passengers said the attack had left people feeling powerless.

"You don't want to start feeling scared to be in your own city," said Joseph Durrin, 33, a graphic designer. "It's scary to think terrorists might still be here. There is nothing you could really do about that. How can you stop someone taking public transportation?"

Sir Ian, the police chief, declined to say whether he believed the same group of people had carried out both sets of attacks.

After the July 7 bombing, an Internet posting claimed responsibility in the name of the Secret Organization of Al Qaeda Jihad in Europe.

No group claimed responsibility for Thursday's attack.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Stephen Grey, Hélène Fouquet, Karla Adams, Eric Pfanner of The International Herald Tribune and Heather Timmons.