LONDON, July 11: Prime Minister Tony Blair condemned last week’s bomb attacks in London as a “murderous carnage of the innocent” on Monday and vowed Britain would hunt down the suspected ‘Islamist militants’ responsible. Mr Blair said the search for the attackers who killed at least 52 people on three underground trains and a double-decker bus was one of the most intense and vigorous the country had known.
Authorities made the first two formal identifications of victims — a mother of two and a university cleaner. But dozens of families were still anxiously waiting for news.
A Nigerian mother made an anguished appeal to be told the fate of her British-born son near the site of the bus bombing, where people have laid flowers in memory of the victims.
“We express our revulsion at this murderous carnage of the innocent,” Blair told a hushed House of Commons in his first comments to parliament about the bombings.
“We will pursue those responsible — not just the perpetrators but the planners of this outrage — wherever they are and we will not rest until they are identified and as far as is humanly possible brought to justice,” he said.
Blair was in Scotland hosting a summit of the G8 group of major industrialized nations when the bombers struck. He has said the attacks were probably timed to disrupt the summit.
“It seems probable that the attack was carried out by Islamist extremist terrorists of the kind who over recent years have been responsible for so many innocent deaths,” he told parliament, echoing previous government statements.
Blair said police liaison officers — who are trained to counsel people whose loved ones are dead, missing or severely injured — had been assigned to 74 families.—Reuters
