LONDON, July 9: Recovery workers on Saturday trawled for more corpses from subway carriages crumpled in the deadliest terror attack on Britain as an Al Qaeda message claimed ‘this laudable Conquest’.
Forensic police garbed in white picked over the bombing sites, curtained off by plastic sheets, scrambling for leads in a vast investigation focused on Osama bin Laden’s network.
More than 50 people are confirmed dead, leaving relatives, friends and lovers of the missing in an agonizing wait.
As well as the dead, more than 700 people were injured when three bombs tore through trains on the London Underground and a fourth ripped apart a double-decker bus, the worst attack on Britain since World War II.
A second group linked to Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaeda organization claimed responsibility for the synchronised blasts in a statement posted on a website.
“A group of mujahideen from a division of the Abu Hafs al Masri Brigades piled blow after blow on the infidel capital, the British capital, leaving dead and injured,” said the statement.
The Masri division congratulated itself on ‘this laudable conquest’ and warned that more attacks would follow.
The statement’s authenticity could not be verified.
Shortly after Thursday’s attacks a separate statement claiming responsibility was posted in the name of the ‘Al Qaeda Organization - Jihad in Europe’.
Investigators have yet to name any suspects, but British newspapers said on Saturday police had asked European counterparts for information on a Moroccan religious figure, Mohammed al Garbuzi, who lived in Britain for 16 years before vanishing from his north London home last year.
Al Garbuzi, 45, heads the Moroccan Islamic Combatant Group (GICM), blamed for attacks that killed 45 people in the Moroccan city of Casablanca in May 2003.
The Independent newspaper said Al Garbuzi was linked to Abu Qatada, a Palestinian based in London who is considered the ‘spiritual head’ of Al Qaeda in Europe. He is currently detained under British anti-terrorism laws. Another paper, the Sun, said police were also hunting Syrian-born Spanish national Mustafa Setmariam Nasar, thought to have links to a Spanish Al Qaeda cell.—AFP