'No direct linkage' yet made between London bombings: Clarke

0 Comments | AFP, August, 2005

LONDON (AFP) — Police have yet to establish a "direct linkage" between the July 7 bombings in London and the failed attempt on July 21 to repeat them, Home Secretary Charles Clarke said.

"I think it would be very, very surprising if they weren't linked in some way, (but) there is not a direct linkage yet formally established to be able to make that assertion," Clarke told BBC radio.

Fifty-six people were killed, including four apparent suicide bombers, in the July 7 attacks on three subway trains and a double-decker bus. An attempt to repeat the blasts two weeks later failed when the bombs did not go off.

Clarke, the cabinet minister in charge of public security, spoke a day after he was briefed on the state of the investigation by Sir Ian Blair, chief of...