British minister warns against risk of another attack
8/7/2005 17:29
British Home Secretary Charles Clarke warned on Friday the bombers who
attacked London's transportation network could strike again. Speaking to
British Broadcasting Corp radio, Clarke said "We have to have ... maximum
consideration of the risk of another attack, and that's why our total effort
today is focused on identifying the perpetrators and bringing them to
justice." "That is of course the No. 1 preoccupation that the police and
security services have at this moment," he said. Clarke said police have not
ruled out the possibility that one or more of the attackers who struck three
subway trains and a double-decker bus on Thursday could have been suicide
bombers. "No particular hypothesis has been ruled out or confirmed," he
said. Four apparently coordinated bomb explosions hit central London Thursday
morning, killing at least 37 people and injuring some 700 others. Also on
Friday, the home secretary rejected any idea of an intelligence failure on the
attacks, saying the bomb attacks came "out of the blue." Clarke said "as far
as the general threat assessment was concerned, we didn't have prior knowledge
of this attack." "We obviously are looking very carefully at all our
intelligence to see if anything was missed, but in fact we don't believe
anything was missed, It just came out of the blue," he said. British
newspapers had earlier questioned the alertness of Britain's security services.
Xinhua news
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