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British police revise timing of 3 explosions { July 9 2005 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/international/europe/09cnd-london.html?hphttp://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/09/international/europe/09cnd-london.html?hp
July 9, 2005
British Police Revise Timing of 3 Explosions
By ALAN COWELL
LONDON, July 9 - The British police today revised critical details of Thursday’s terrorist bombings, saying that three of four bombs exploded "almost simultaneously" on subway trains rather than over a period of almost half an hour as initially announced.
At a news conference, senior police officers said the three bombs that hit the London Underground had been separated by 50 seconds, revising their initial assertion that three bombs exploded over a period of 26 minutes.
The fourth bomb, which ripped the top off a double-decker bus, struck about 57 minutes later. The police could not fully explain the time lag on Saturday.
The newest police accounts raised the possibility of a greater sophistication than investigators had initially believed. The revision also underscored the perils for investigators of offering premature assessments under pressure to be as responsive as possible to public pressure.
Investigators said earlier the subway bombs were simple devices crudely made. Each device is said by police to have contained less than 10 pounds of "high explosives".
But the new evidence of close synchronization showed that timers were likely used and that the bombers had planned for a simultaneous attack maximizing the impact on London and its commuters.
"It was bang, bang, bang very close together," said Tim O' Toole, the managing director of the London Underground, speaking at a press conference with the police.
Officials at London Underground said from the beginning that the attacks came closer together than police suggested. And amateur footage taken by an unidentified passenger, shown on Friday on the BBC, also indicated that the bombings had been much closer together than the first official account. But police said on Saturday that they had concluded the bombings were more closely synchronized from their own investigations, rather than a result of a deliberate attempt to mislead suspects.
London remained jittery on Saturday with bomb scares and security alerts forcing people to be evacuated from places such as King’s Cross station one of the scenes of the attack.
At least 49 people died in the morning rush-hour on Thursday when three bombs exploded in subway tunnel deep underground and a fourth tore the top deck off of London red double-decker bus. Of 700 people initially wounded, around 65 people remained in hospital on Saturday.
Additionally, the police said at least 20 other people were still missing and, in moments that recalled the aftermath of the September 11 attack in New York, people gathered forlornly with photographs of missing lovers, friends and relatives at some of the attack locations.
Police said they were having extreme difficulty excavating bodies from two cars trapped in a subway tunnel deep below ground between King’s Cross station and Russell Square in central London. Police also said they had not identified many of the bodies.
"It’s extremely hot, extremely dusty and quite dangerous down there," said Andy Trotter, a senior police officer, at a news conference.
Initially, police said the series of bombings London’s worst terror attack in decades -- started at 8.51 a.m. local time on Thursday morning near Liverpool Street station. By this first account, the second was at Kings Cross station at 8.56 a.m. and the third at Edgware Road at 9.17 a.m.. The explosion on the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square was timed at 9.47 a.m.
But, at a news conference on Saturday, Brian Paddick, deputy assistant police commissioner, said all three explosions "exploded within 50 seconds of each other" at around 0850 a.m.. The initial error in the account had been caused because the police were only informed of the Edgware Road bombing at 9.17 a.m.
He also said the explosives were "not home-made."
"But whether it was military, commercial, plastic, we don’t want to say at this stage." He also offered two explanations for the way the bombers may have operated.
"There are two possibilities here," he said. "Either you have people with the explosive devices who synchronized watches or whatever and have all subsequently detonated their devices at the same time, or that they have been triggered by timing devices coordinated to go off at the same time."
In a subsequent interview with the BBC, Mr Paddick said there was a possibility that the police initial inclination was "that it was timing devices, but you could have three people manually detonating their bombs." He did not say when exactly the police believed the bombs had been planted. All three detonated in tunnels between subway stations, as close as 100 yards from platforms. The suggestion of more sophisticated timing devices offered a strong resemblance to the techniques in the bombings in Madrid in March, 2004, when 191 people died after terrorists used mobile phones as timers to detonate bombs on commuter trains. Police did not definitively rule out suicide bombings but indicated they believed terrorists may still be at large.
"The fact that we have had these attacks does not mean we won’t have more attacks," said another senior police officer, Andy Trotter, at the news conference.
Mr Paddick said that, in the bus bombing, "there’s a possibility that the person with the bomb died on the bus. There’s also the possibility that he just left the bomb before it exploded."
But he said, "the evidence that we have so far is that it was a device in a bag rather than something strapped to an individual."
Police said they had made no arrests. British press reports said police had sought the help of other European security services to track down Mohammed al-Gerbouzi, a Moroccan fugitive tried in absentia in Morocco after bombings in Casablanca in 2003 which killed 44 people. Mr Gerbouzi has been accused of having links to Al Qaeda and has been sought by Spanish police in connection with last year’s Madrid bombings.
"We are not confirming that we are looking for any specific individual," Mr Paddick said. Another name mentioned in connection with the attack in British reports is that of a Saudi exile living in North London, Saad al-Fagih. But he denied reports suggesting that an initial claim of responsibility for the attack by an al Qaeda-linked organization had been carried on a website or bulletin board associated with him. But he told The Guardian newspaper:"It does not belong to me at all."
In a different claim posted on the Internet, a group calling itself the Abu Hafs al-Masri Brigades and named for a former lieutenant of Osama bin Laden took responsibility for the attack. The group has taken responsibility for attacks in Turkey and Spain but police have tended to be skeptical about the authenticity of its claims. Mr Paddick said British investigators would not "rule out anything that might be useful."
The bombings came in a remarkable week of seesawing emotions in Britain. Just a week ago over 150,000 people thronged a Live8 free rock concert in support of ending African poverty just one week ago. Then, on Wednesday, London was chosen just one day before the bombings to host the 2012 Olympics.
At the same time, Prime Minister Tony Blair was hosting the world’s most powerful leaders, including President George W. Bush at the Gleneagles summit of the Group of 8 industrialized countries in Scotland.
In an interview on BBC Radio on Saturday hailed his compatriots’ generally stoical response to the bombings. "The British have a very great inner resilience and the response of people in London has been extraordinary," he said.
"Probably with this type of terrorism the solution cannot only be the security measures," Mr Blair said.
"This type of terrorism has very deep roots," he said. "It is only when you start to pull it up by the roots that you will deal with it." He called Islamic terrorism a "dreadful perversion of the true faith of Islam."
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
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