Police officers stand guard outside a house in Leeds in northern England. (Reuters)

LONDON, July 13, 2005 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - British authorities said they were hunting Wednesday, July 13, for the masterminds of last week's bombings in London as Britons reeled in shock over the news that the attacks were apparently carried out by four British-born Muslim bombers.

Prime Minister Tony Blair offered a plan meanwhile to combat extremism to include toughening procedures to prevent extremists from entering or staying in Britain while promoting dialogue with moderates, Reuters reported.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke, who is visiting Brussels to confer with his European Union counterparts, said Wednesday the police were now hunting for accomplices of the bombers who he said decided "to blow themselves up."

In an interview with BBC Radio, Clarke said "we have to attack the people who are driving, organizing and manipulating those people" who carried out the bombings in the British capital.

"And that's of course where the police investigation is going just at this moment," Clarke said.

Four Bombers

A woman pauses after laying flowers at the site of the bus bombing in  Tavistock Square. (Reuters)

Police however have yet to say explicitly that all four attacks were carried out by suicide bombers.

British newspapers said the four who carried out the bombings last Thursday, July 7, that killed at least 52 people on three underground trains and a double-decker bus in London were all Britons of Pakistani origin.

Three of the suspects were named by newspapers as Hasib Hussein, 19, Shehzad Tanweer, 20 or 22, and Mohammad Sadique Khan, 30.

The Independent newspaper, however, identified the fourth attacker as Eliaz Fiaz, 30, from Dewsbury, a town near Leeds.

All the reports, which cited a variety of intelligence and police sources, said the bombers traveled to London's central King's Cross station together by commuter train from Luton , a town just north of the capital.

After a brief and low-key goodbye, they reportedly separated to launch their attacks in Thursday morning's rush hour.

Police gained vital clues when Hussein's parents, who knew their son was in London and were unable to contact him by phone after the bombs went off, called the police, The Times said.

Investigators picking through the remains of the devastated bus found a body wearing clothes similar to those Hussein was reported as last wearing, and also noticed that he seemed to have been very close to the blast.

This led to police examining security camera footage from King's Cross to spot Hussein and three other young men traveling together, all carrying rucksacks.  

None of the four was in the files of the security services, according to several British papers.

Shock

The revelation that the bombers might be born-and-bred Britons sparked a bout of national soul-searching in the press.

"Suicide bombers from suburbia," screamed the banner headline in the Daily Mail above a photograph of police vans standing on a street of ordinary-looking terraced houses in the northern English city of Leeds, where police raided several homes on Tuesday, July 12. 

"The conclusion that the terrorists were home-grown is deeply unsettling. It does not, in any way, close this case," The Times said in an editorial.

"Is it really possible that no one beyond the bombers had any inkling of their intentions?" It asked.

The Guardian, for its part, described news that the bombers were British as "the worst of all possible outcomes. ... It will have been the work of people brought up in our multi-racial society of which policy-makers were rightly proud. This is not just a challenge for government but for civic society, too."

Uprooting Terror 

Blair told parliament that British Muslims are "overwhelmingly law-abiding, decent members of our society." (Reuters)

In Blair's weekly question time in parliament, he announced a plan to uproot the problem of religious extremism.

Ministers will begin consultations on planned counter-terrorism legislation within the next couple of weeks, AFP quoted Blair as saying.

Prior to the bombings -- the worst attack on British soil since World War II -- counter-terrorism proposals were denounced as a threat to civil liberties.

"We will look urgently at how we strengthen the procedures to exclude people from entering the UK who may incite hatred or act contrary to the public good, and at how we deport such people, if they come here, more easily," Blair said.

Blair vowed on Monday, July 11, before parliament to crack down hard on Muslim scholars “inciting hatred” in the country.

On Saturday, July 9, Blair admitted there can be no security solution to terrorist attacks, urging the world to address the underlying causes of terrorism. 

Muslim Cooperation 

Blair also said his government would begin talks immediately with leaders of the British Muslim minority about combating what he termed the "poisonous and perverted misinterpretation of the religion of Islam."

He held talks on Wednesday morning with Muslim MPs to discuss means of how to tackle "Islamic extremism".

"In the end, this can only be taken on and defeated by the community itself," he said.

He added his government was talking to Muslim and non-Muslim governments on how to mobilize the "moderate and true voice of Islam."

"I am confident that other European countries, the majority of whom face the same type of threat, will be supportive in this, I'm sure they will," Blair said.

Blair also sought to ease concerns among Muslims in Britain that they were now the target of a backlash.

"I would ask for the same measured and calm response from the country that has characterized it" since the bombers struck the British capital's transport system, Blair told parliament.

"This is a small group of extremists. Not one who can be ignored, but neither should it define Muslims in Britain who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, decent members of our society," he said during the weekly session of prime minister's questions.

He added that his government condemned any attack against Muslims "unreservedly."

Fears of reprisals have been running high among British Muslims in the wake of the July 7 attacks. At least seven mosques have come under arson and racist attacks since then.

The attacks culminated in the racism-driven killing of a British Muslim, who was beaten to death by a gang of extremists. 

The Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, warned on Monday, July 11, against making Muslims "scapegoats" for the London bombings.