Families search for bombing victims

The poster of Karolina missing since the bomb attacks is pictured at King's Cross in London yesterday two days after the bomb attacks there. Police investigating the London bomb blasts were probing extremist groups linked to al-Qaeda as recovery teams tried to pull yet more bodies from a wrecked subway train. PHOTO: AFP

Investigators said they are taking seriously a claim of responsibility posted on the Internet by a group calling itself "The Secret Organis-ation of al-Qaeda in Europe," which they fear may be allied with Iraq's terror chief, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi.

The name was previously little-known to terror experts, although a Web posting under that title had claimed responsibility for the last major terror attack in Europe: the bombs on commuter trains in Madrid in March 2004, which killed 191 people.

By Saturday morning, rescue crews had reported at least 49 people died in the attacks. The bombs that killed them on three London Underground cars and a double-decker bus were each lighter than 10 pounds and could be carried in a backpack, police said. But they did not say how the explosives were placed or detonated.

The bombs were probably made from simple, relatively easy-to-obtain plastic explosives, not the higher-grade military plastics like Semtex that would have killed far more people, said Andy Oppenheimer, a weapons expert who consults for Jane's Information Group.

However, Roland Jacquard, who heads the Paris-based International Terrorism Observatory, said that bomb experts from Spain sent to London to help assess the explosive devices used in the attacks were of a different opinion.

"For the moment, from what I know, it's a military-type explosive, extremely hard and powerful, difficult to manoeuvre," Jacquard told the AP, based on conversations with people investigating the blast.

Investigators didn't immediately comment on his remarks, which were first reported by French media.

British Transport Police, who oversee the Underground, said crews were still working around the wreckage of a subway train near Russell Square where at least 21 people died.

Crews reached the cars and said they saw more bodies in the hot, rat-infested tunnels, but warned it could take days to retrieve them. Many of the tunnels are more than 100 feet beneath the surface.

"This is an enclosed tunnel and it is very difficult conditions and it's a bit dangerous," Transport Police Deputy Chief Constable Andy Trotter told reporters. "It will take some time before everyone is removed from there."

Sir Ian Blair, commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said he expected the death toll to rise but doubted it would reach triple digits.

Friends and relatives of the missing scoured London hospitals, bearing photographs of their loved ones. Jamie Gordon's co-workers posted photos of him on trees and walls around where the double-decker blew up. They said they hadn't heard from the 30-year-old Zimbabwean since he called his asset management firm in central London on Thursday to say he was on his way to work aboard a bus.

"Please help us find our friend," the posters read in a scene reminiscent of the desperate search for victims in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the United States.