Events are moving swiftly in the case of last week’s terrorist attacks in London where one man has been arrested and authorities believe at least one suspect died in the attacks:
They said there was forensic evidence that the bomber responsible for the train explosion at Aldgate died there.
Personal documents of three suspects were also found close to the explosions suggesting all four died in the blasts.
One man has been arrested in Yorkshire and taken to London for questioning after police raids in Leeds and the seizure of a car in Luton.
In a press conference police said they had identified four suspects who travelled to London on the morning of the attacks – three of them from West Yorkshire.
One of the men from West Yorkshire had been reported missing by his family and his property was found at the bus blast scene.
The development came after a day of of dramatic developments in the hunt for those behind the bomb attacks in London.
Earlier police carried out controlled explosions in Leeds and Luton and searched six houses.
Are authorities talking about suicide bombers? Not officially, at least, Sky News reports:
It is “highly likely” one of the Tube attackers died in the strikes on the Underground network – but Sky News has been told all the men were probably suicide bombers.
Sky News correspondent Martin Brunt said senior anti-terror police were working on the assumption the men were suicide bombers and had died in the explosions – and were probably British nationals.
The suspected bombers travelled down from West Yorkshire and met at Kings Cross station shortly before the attacks were launched on Thursday morning, police said at a press conference.
Their images were captured by CCTV cameras.
Personal documents have been found at all four bomb scenes and although the four attackers are thought to have died police were careful not to say whether Britain had suffered its first suicide bomb strike.
Indeed, a carefully planned attack suggests great preparation and coordination, which is bad enough for public opinion to absorb. A suicide bomber implies a much more spontaneous murderous act and has a different connotation.
Times Online adds:
Strong forensic evidence suggests that at least one of the bombers died in the attacks. Police sources suggest that all four bombers died, in what some analysts are dubbing the first suicide attacks on the British mainland.
The family of one of the suspects reported him missing within minutes of the last explosion, on a bus in Tavistock Square. Evidence linking him to the blast was found at the scene and is thought to have been a crucial breakthrough in the investigation.
Images of the four men together were captured on camera at King’s Cross station minutes before the bombings. The gang, three of whom came from West Yorkshire, then dispersed.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard’s Anti-Terrorist Branch said the investigation into the bombings was now moving “at great speed” and focused on four men who travelled from West Yorkshire to King’s Cross, arriving at the station shortly before 8:30am last Thursday morning.
“We are trying to establish their movements in the run-up to last week’s attack and specifically to establish whether they all died in the explosions,” said Mr Clarke.
If this is a suicide bombing, it portends a new kind of terrorism with which Great Britain — and perhaps, eventually, the United States — has to cope.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.