| Police say more innocents could die Original Source Link: (May no longer be active) http://reuters.myway.com/article/20050725/2005-07-25T025113Z_01_N24688201_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-BRITAIN-DC.htmlhttp://reuters.myway.com/article/20050725/2005-07-25T025113Z_01_N24688201_RTRIDST_0_NEWS-SECURITY-BRITAIN-DC.html
UK police say more innocents could die in bomb hunt Jul 24, 10:51 PM (ET) By Peter Griffiths
LONDON (Reuters) - British police say more members of the public could be shot in error as they escalate their battle against terrorism and hunt for four men who tried to set off explosions on London's transport system last week.
The warning comes after police, who are engaged in one of the biggest manhunts in British history, mistakenly shot dead a Brazilian man on Friday, thinking he was a suicide bomber.
Britain's most senior policeman, Ian Blair, defended the shoot-to-kill policy for dealing with suspected suicide bombers and said police were in a race against time to find those behind last Thursday's attempted bombings of three underground trains and a bus, the second attack on the capital in two weeks.
"This is a terrifying set of circumstances for individuals to make decisions," Blair told Sky News television. "Somebody else could be shot."
Electrician Jean Charles de Menezes, 27, was shot five times in the head after being chased on to an underground train by undercover police, witnesses said.
The shooting has sparked intense debate about the shoot-to-kill policy in a country which takes prides in having a largely unarmed police force. Only 10 percent of police in London routinely carry weapons.
But in the days since the July 7 bombing of three trains and a bus in London in which 52 people were killed and 700 wounded, Britain's newspapers and television news broadcasts have been filled with images of heavily armed police on the streets of London.
Raids by police across the capital and scores of security alerts have heightened the already tense atmosphere in the city. Police arrested a third man under anti-terrorism laws on Saturday.
Police chief Blair has said that while police have no proof of a link between the July 7 bombings and last Thursday's attacks, there is obviously a similar pattern.
In both instances three underground trains and a bus were targeted, although in the latest attack the homemade bombs failed to detonate, possibly because the material had degraded.
INQUIRY, VIGIL
Interior minister Charles Clarke, who on Sunday postponed a family holiday, also defended the shoot-to-kill policy, under which police marksmen are being told to aim for the head rather than the chest to kill a suspected bomber.
"A mistake was clearly made which will be regretted forever," he told the BBC. "But I don't think that means that they are wrong to have a policy (to deal) with these appalling circumstances."
Police said Menezes had been followed from a block of flats in south London which 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 demanded a full inquiry into the death, while Brazilians staged a vigil in London.
British newspapers printed his photograph on their front pages with headlines such as "Another terror victim" and "Death of an Innocent."
Scotland Yard said at the weekend they might have found a fifth device abandoned close to the British Broadcasting Corporation's studios in west London, raising the spectre of a possible fifth bomber on the run.
A new poll on Monday suggested Britons believe their country's support for the Iraq war contributed to the London bombings, a suggestion Prime Minister Tony Blair has strongly denied.
Nearly a quarter of those polled for the Daily Mirror newspaper said Iraq was the main cause for the bombings, with 62 percent saying it was a contributory factor.
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