Suspected suicide bomber shot on Tube (London)

[Ebusitanus]

After what looked like a failed attempt to do some more carnage due to defective explosives or malfunctioning detonators

http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/news...TY-BRITAIN.xml

By Katherine Baldwin
LONDON (Reuters) - Police shot a man at a South London underground station on Friday as they hunted for bombers who struck London's transport network on Thursday.
Media reports said the man was a suspected suicide bomber and an eyewitness said he had been shot dead. Transport Police said they had suspended services on the city's Northern and Victoria lines that run through Stockwell station.
"I saw them (police) offload five shots into the person on the floor," eyewitness Mark Whitby at the station told BBC television. "I saw them kill a man."
The attacks at Thursday lunchtime caused chaos but killed no one, in an apparently failed bid to repeat suicide bombings which killed 52 people two weeks earlier.
As forensics experts searched the three underground trains and a double-decker bus hit by small, near-simultaneous explosions on Thursday, police were called to a series of security alerts across the south of the city.
At one stage armed police surrounded a mosque in east London after a bomb scare.
They were also examining the remains of the devices that failed to detonate, in the hope of identifying the explosives and finding fingerprints or other clues that might lead them to the bomb-makers.
"They're going to be looking for the details of the bomb and any other things that might be near it, DNA or hair," intelligence expert Crispin Black said.
"But I think the quickest-running part of this investigation is likely to be the manhunt," he told the BBC.
As the hunt intensified, commuters showed a phlegmatically stiff upper lip and got back onto buses and underground trains on Friday morning, saying they would continue their normal routines despite a second wave of attacks in two weeks.
"I just accept I have to get to work. It could happen any time. It's not completely gone but you have to get on with life," said Frances Jones, waiting at a bus stop by London Bridge station on her way to work at a pensions company.
"I would still get the tube. If your number is up, your number is up," said Elisa Blackborough, travelling to work at a bank in the city of London financial district.
Police have far more clues from the Thursday attacks, including the unexploded bombs, eye witness reports and CCTV footage, than they had after the July 7 suicide bombs that killed 52 commuters and the four bombers and wounded 700. But security experts warned that the attacks could continue.
"For determined terrorists one attack is never enough... you want to create a series so that there is a feeling that there is a campaign, there is a feeling that this will go on and on," said defence expert Michael Clarke from King's College, London.
Saudi Arabia's ambassador to London and former spy chief Prince Turki al Faisal said the attack bore the classic taint of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network.
Police also used the occasion to call for sweeping new powers, including being allowed to hold terrorism suspects for up to three months without charge as compared to the current two-week limit.
The pound fell against the dollar and the euro after first reports of the shooting, while government bonds around the world edged higher on safe-haven buying. The index of leading UK shares fell.
"The second wave of attacks are creating a sense of event risk in the market. There are concerns of a wider campaign under way and that is having a destabilising impact on the market," said Lena Komileva, market economist at interdealer broker Tullett Prebon.