Thursday, July 28 2005 19:14 Hrs (IST) - World Time -

London: Intensifying probe into the two waves of terror strikes in London, police today (July 28, 2005) arrested nine people for suspected involvement in the July 21 failed attacks as they questioned one of the bombing suspects and made the "largest ever" security deployment on the transport system.

Anti-terror police arrested six of the suspects at one property in Tooting and three at another in the same area in south London during pre-dawn raids.

It is not thought any of those held are the three bombers still on the run after last Thursday's failed attacks in the city, police said.

Scotland Yard said the suspects, arrested under the Terrorism Act 2000, had been taken to a central London police station for questioning. A spokesman said the search of the addresses was going on.

The arrests came as detectives questioned one of the would-be London bombers, Somali-born Yasin Hassan Omar (24), captured during a dramatic day of raids and arrests across the country yesterday.

A hunt for three other bombers was continuing as a new picture of one of the men, suspected Shepherd's Bush attacker, was released. Police hoped the new picture, which is clearer than the previous one will help identify him.

Three women arrested

Last night, three women were arrested after a raid in a flat at Blair House, close to Stockwell station in south London, on suspicion of harbouring offenders, a Scotland Yard spokeswoman said.

The three women remained in custody overnight at a central London police station. The suspected Shepherd's Bush attacker is thought to have lived in the Blair House flat.

A major police operation was under way on the UK's transport system, with officers on a precautionary high alert, BBC reported.

The effort to reassure the public and deter would-be attackers saw the rail system's "largest ever deployment", it quoted British Transport Police as saying.

Officers were patrolling stations and trains, although Transport Police would not say how many officers were involved.

The Transport Police, however, said the high alert was not in response to specific information.

The huge deployment of officers came exactly one week after the failed July 21 attacks and three weeks after the July seven bombings that left 56 people dead.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair warned it was possible "that those at large will strike again", or that another cell could do so.

'It does remain possible that those at large will strike again'

"It does remain possible that those at large will strike again. It does also remain possible that there are other cells, who are capable and intent on striking again," he told a meeting of the Metropolitan Police authority.

Blair said he was confident the bombers would be caught, but the failure of the July 21 attacks did not mean a weakening of their capability or resolve.

"This is not the B team, these were not the amateurs, they only made one mistake and we're very, very lucky," he said.

"The carnage that would have occurred, had those bombs gone off, would have at least been equivalent to those on 7 July, and therefore it is absolutely imperative that we find those responsible," Blair said.

Besides Omar who was captured yesterday, police had named Muktar Said Ibrahim, 27 - also known as Muktar Mohammed Said - as a suspect in the July 21 failed attacks.

Also, investigators have found that the four suicide bombers, who triggered a series of explosions here on July seven killing 56 people, left a car packed with 16 bombs, raising fears of a wider terror network, 'The Times' newspaper reported, adding the bombs were made by the same person who assisted the second group of would-be bombers.

A number of bombs and components, some packed with nails to cause death and maximum injury, were recovered from the car parked by the bombers at Luton station.

The devices recovered at the station were "strikingly similar in their configuration and contents" to the unexploded bomb found at Warren Street Tube station on July 21, security sources told the newspaper.