London – As the investigation into the worst attack in Britain since World War II fanned out to Pakistan, Egypt, Jamaica and the United States, Prime Minister Tony Blair vowed Saturday to confront the “evil ideology” of Islamic fanaticism that has inflicted despair on every community here, including Muslims.
Police have formally identified all four suicide bombers, Scotland Yard reported. Pathologists put names to body parts found in each of the explosions by analyzing DNA samples collected at their homes and from fingerprints left on a prepaid parking stub one of the men left on his dashboard.
Investigators also released the first photo showing the bombers together, a security- camera image of the four entering the Luton train station north of London 90 minutes before the blasts tore apart three underground trains and a double-decker bus. On Saturday, the twisted wreckage of the red No. 30 bus, which had become an icon of the attack, was hauled away from Tavistock Square on a flatbed truck.
The death toll from the bombings rose to 55, as a badly wounded young architect succumbed nine days after being rescued from the blast scene on the Piccadilly Line near King’s Cross station. His missing girlfriend also was believed to have died in the deadliest of the four explosions.
Anti-terrorism investigators have tied all four explosions to young British Muslims who died in the attacks, three of them of Pakistani descent and the fourth having a Jamaican background, but authorities have cast a wide net for the masterminds, explosives experts and financiers.
In Pakistan, police arrested four men Saturday in connection with the bombings, including the head of an Islamic school visited this year by Shahzad Tanweer, the 22-year- old from the northern English city of Leeds who police say bombed the eastbound Circle Line train near Aldgate station.
Tanweer’s role in the Aldgate blast and the identity of bus bomber Hasib Hussain, 18, had been released earlier in the week.
Saturday, authorities confirmed the identities of the two other bombers, 30-year-old Mohamed Sidique Khan, who blew up the train near Edgware Road, and Germaine Lindsay, a 19-year-old Briton born in Jamaica blamed for the Piccadilly Line explosion.
Investigators in Cairo continued their probe into the role of a 33-year-old Egyptian chemical engineer detained last week. Magdy el-Nashar rented the Leeds apartment where police raids turned up large quantities of explosives in a bathtub.
The jailed scientist who had lived and studied in Leeds for the past five years has insisted he knew nothing of the London plot and said he had flown to Cairo more than a week before the blasts.
Muslim leaders throughout Britain have embarked on an investigation into radicalism, talking to local leaders about the challenge of steering disgruntled young men away from terrorist recruiters.
