British police arrested three men on Thursday in connection with the July 7, 2005 attacks on the London transport network which killed 56.
LONDON: British police arrested three men on Thursday in connection with the July 7, 2005 attacks on the London transport network which killed 56, including the four suicide bombers.
Two men, aged 23 and 30, were arrested shortly before 1:00 pm (1300 GMT) at Manchester Airport, north-west England, as they were about to board a flight to Pakistan, the Metropolitan Police said. A third, aged 26, was arrested at a house in Leeds, northern England, shortly after 4:00 pm (1600 GMT).
Three of the suicide bombers who wreaked rush-hour carnage on London were from the area around Leeds.
The arrested men were detained on suspicion of the "commission, preparation or instigation of acts of terrorism" under the Terrorism Act 2000, police said.
They were being taken to a central London police station where they will be kept in custody before being interviewed by officers from the Metropolitan Police's Counter-Terrorism Command.
Searches are being carried out at five houses in the Leeds area as well as at a flat and separate business premises in east London in what Scotland Yard called "a pre-planned, intelligence-led operation".
Fifty-two people were killed when four Islamist extremist suicide bombers -- three of them Britons of Pakistani origin and one a naturalised Jamaican -- set off devices on three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus.
The attack, at the height of rush hour, also injured more than 700 in what was the worst-ever terrorist atrocity on British soil.
The police statement said that detectives had continued the investigation both at home and abroad since the bombings.
"This remains a painstaking investigation with a substantial amount of information being analysed and investigated," it added.
"As we have said previously, we are determined to follow the evidence wherever it takes us to identify any other person who may have been involved, in any way, in the terrorist attacks. We need to know who else, apart from the bombers, knew what they were planning. Did anyone encourage them? Did anyone help them with money, or accommodation?" the police said.
Police said no further details of the men arrested would be released.
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