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LONDON - British police scrambled on Monday to find four bombers behind last week's failed attacks on London's transport system, fearing they had gone to ground after security camera pictures of the suspects were released.
The men tried to set off bombs on three underground trains and a bus last Thursday, exactly two weeks after suicide bombers killed 52 people in an attack officials linked to al Qaeda.
London police were keen to shift the focus back onto what they called the biggest manhunt in their history after mistakenly shooting dead a Brazilian electrician they believed to be a suspected suicide bomber.
A police spokeswoman told Reuters the bombers "may strike again so it is a race against time. It is still a very fluid situation. The inquiry is moving at a rapid pace."
"There is no reason to believe they have left the country. They could be harbored in safe houses," she added.
The attacks have sparked frequent security alerts in London, as commuters become alarmed over abandoned packages or people behaving suspiciously.
Weekend newspapers were full of the grainy closed-circuit television pictures of the four suspects and police asked the public for help in tracing them.
Police declined to confirm reports that a fifth would-be bomber was on the loose. On Saturday, police found what may have been a fifth bomb, abandoned in northwest London.
But the investigation was dealt a blow and the reputation of British police severely tarnished when the Brazilian was shot dead by mistake on Friday by detectives hunting the bombers.
SHOT IN THE HEAD
Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot five times in the head after being chased onto an underground train by undercover police, witnesses said.
Police said Menezes had been followed from a block of apartments in south London that had been under surveillance since the July 21 attacks and was shot after running away from armed police who had ordered him to stop.
The Brazilian government has demanded an inquiry into the death. Brazilians staged a vigil in London and the electrician's relatives said they were considering suing British police.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who will meet his British counterpart Jack Straw on Monday, said: "The Brazilian government and the public are shocked and perplexed that a peaceful and innocent person should have been killed."
Despite the concerns of human rights activists, police say they will not abandon what they called their "shoot-to-kill in order to protect" policy with suicide bombers. They have warned that more people could be killed during the investigation.
An opinion poll on Monday showed that 71 percent of Britons defended the policy, under which police marksmen are being told to aim for the head rather than the chest to kill a suspected bomber.
Interior minister Charles Clarke said: "A mistake was clearly made which will be regretted forever. But I don't think that means that they are wrong to have a policy (to deal) with these appalling circumstances."
An opinion poll in the Daily Mirror suggested Britons believe their country's support for the Iraq war contributed to the London bombings, a suggestion Prime Minister Tony Blair has denied.
Nearly a quarter of those polled said Iraq was the main cause for the bombings, with 62 percent saying it was a contributory factor.
Additional reporting by Peter Griffiths
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