The US ABC television pictures of the homemade bombs left behind by the four bombers in the 7/7 attacks in a car at Luton station were a horrible revelation of the human damage they could inflict. Some of the bombs were plain bottles taped with nails so that when they went off, the nails would tear the bodies of people nearby to kill them.
The police found 16 unexploded bombs at Luton in a red Nissan rented by one of the four suicide bombers Shehzad Tanweer in Leeds, but left parked at the station as the bombers took a train to London. The number of devices and the type of bombs, raised fears that the suicide bombers had planned something bigger than first believed by investigators. It was also clear that the use of nail bombs indicated that the instigators of terror wanted to inflict the maximum possible pain on the people of London.
Robert Ayers, a US security expert described to ABC TV the nail bomb,”What is bulging on the sides of the bottle are nails - many, many nails”. The photograph shown of the nail bomb, though only a fuzzy X ray image was chilling enough given that it was intended for use on the Underground. The home made device consisting of a small plastic bottle similar to that found in supermarkets, with an improvised detonator and a cable leading to an electrical device that would set off the bomb, while the nails were attached to the outside of the bottle and encased in layers of clingfilm. The manner in which the nails were attached to the outside of the bottle is believed to be a quirk of a bombmaker, who may have made dozens of such devices.
The security expert believes that the bombs were left in the car for others to pick up, but the speed with which the Metropolitan Police responded, finding the car and taking control of it, pre-empted the possibility of a second suicide squad getting to use the devices. With some bombs packaged like pancakes, the bombers could have easily passed through to achieve the intended damage. The explosives in the Luton car matched those used in the four suicide bombings and are likely to have been made in a house in Leeds.
Some exclusive photographs of the 7/7 attacks show the devastation inside the train particularly the one between King's Cross and Russell Square, where 27 were killed, indicated that the bomb which went off was a big one. The impact of the blast had blown out the sides and the roof of the compartment. The pictures, which were leaked to ABC News by US law enforcement sources, have raised concern in Scotland Yard that the leak is a result of the international co-operation required in such an inquiry.
Though the initial estimates of the attacks indicated that the four bombers had intended to die with their bombs, recent evidence suggests that the men did not plan to commit suicide and may have been duped into dying. The evidence includes the fact that all four men bought round-trip railway tickets, their rented car left at Luton had a seven-day parking sticker, while containing a large stash of explosives for another attack. Moreover the bombers individually had done nothing to suggest that they knew about their imminent death in the attacks. Last but not the least, they left behind baffled families without a note, videotape or Internet trail suggesting their sudden decision to kill themselves.
Meanwhile detectives quizzed last night the 24-year-old Somali Yasin Hassan Omar, a suspect of the 21/7 attack who was earlier arrested at his Birmingham home. A second image of the alleged Shepherd's Bush Tube bomber released on Wednesday sparked recognition from neighbours in Stockwell, leading to a raid by the police on a flat rented to an Ethipian woman, close to Stockwell Tube station where three of the 21/7 bombers started their mission. Since July 21, 18 people have been arrested, including Omar and explosives found in a garage linked to a flat where Omar was registered to be living.
Police are now hunting for one of his friends who regularly visited Belgium and who vanished around July 7, even as Mukhtar Said Ibrahim the second suspect of the 21/7 attacks is believed to be in Belgium. The investigations are now trained on locating the 21/7 bombers, who offer the only clues to the bigger 7/7 attack. After naming two suspects, Scotland Yard is in “a race against time” to establish and apprehend the other suspects, besides trying to piece together how the two waves of attacks that left London trembling were coordinated.
