British police arrest four men in London bomb hunt

LONDON - British police arrested four men in central Britain on Wednesday in their hunt for the suspected bombers in last Thursday's failed attacks on London's transport network.

Police declined comment on a BBC report they may have caught one of the suspected bombers.

One of the four -- all arrested in the city of Birmingham -- was brought to the British capital for questioning at a high security detention centre. Police sources told Reuters that man was the most significant arrest.

The bombs last Thursday failed to go off on three underground trains and a bus.

"We've had four arrests," a police spokeswoman said.

Later, police said they had arrested two more men at a train station in central Britain as they travelled from the Newcastle toward London. Police declined comment on whether the two arrests were connected with the other four.

During the arrests in Birmingham police used a stun gun to detain one man in the Haymills area of the city.

They said a suspect package was found during the operation.

The other three men were detained at a separate address in Birmingham.

The botched bombings on July 21 occurred exactly two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 people in a similar attack on London's transport system. Police have linked the suicide bombers to al Qaeda.

Police have published photos of the four suspects in the July 21 attempted attacks from images captured on closed-circuit television in the hope of tracking down the bombers.

Police chief Ian Blair said on Tuesday the investigation was moving at an astonishing pace but warned that the fugitive bombers could strike again.

"They are capable of killing again," Blair told Channel 4 News television on Tuesday. "We must find them. We are flat out and we are getting a great deal of intelligence."

Newspapers reported on Wednesday that a prime suspect wanted in the July 21 failed attacks had served a jail sentence for knifepoint robberies.

Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27, whom police say planted a bomb on a bus in last week's attempted attacks, was jailed for five years in 1996 for mugging people when he was part of a teenage gang, the Daily Telegraph said.

The Sun tabloid said Ibrahim arrived in Britain from the East African country of Eritrea in 1992.

Newspapers said Ibrahim and another of the four suspected bombers came to Britain as child refugees from East Africa and had received state welfare payments.

The Home Office (interior ministry) and police declined to comment on the reports.

- REUTERS