By Michael Holden
Reuters
LONDON - British police named two of four suspects on Monday behind a failed bombing attack on London's transport network, appealing to the public to help speed an investigation tainted by a mistaken shooting.
The head of Britain's anti-terrorist branch, Peter Clarke, said the two were Yasin Hassan Omar and Muktar Said-Ibrahim or Muktar Mohammed-Said. He gave details of where the two others fled after their bombs failed to explode last Thursday.
"I hope that by setting out some of what we have been able to learn over the past few days, the public may be able to contribute even more to the progress of the investigation," Clarke told a news conference.
Police said they had also arrested two people on Monday, taking the total number of those in detention to five, and armed officers raided an apartment in north London that had been visited by one of the suspects. But they made no arrests.
The police said the arrests and the search was in connection with the failed bombings of 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.
But they were still hunting the four prime suspects.
"We are still looking for four men," a spokesman said.
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 said 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 harboured in safe houses."
Grainy Pictures
Weekend newspapers were full of the grainy closed-circuit television pictures of the four suspects and police asked the public for help in tracing the men.
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.
Prime Minister Tony Blair said: "We are all desperately sorry for the death of an innocent person. I understand entirely the feelings of the young man's family."
"If this had turned out to be a terrorist and they (the police) had failed to take that action, they would have been criticised the other way," Blair told reporters.
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.
Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim, who will meet his British counterpart Jack Straw later 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 in the Daily Mirror suggested Britons believe their country's support for the Iraq war contributed to the London bombings, something 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 Paul Majendie
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