Police kill man at London subway station, link it to previous attacks

LONDON (AP) — Plainclothes police chased a man in a thick coat through a subway station, wrestled him to the floor and shot him to death in front of stunned commuters Friday. Police said the shooting was "directly linked" to the investigations of the bomb attacks on London's transit system.

Appealing for help from the public to capture the suspects, police released photographs of four men suspected of launching Thursday's second wave of terrorist attacks, saying they bore similarities to the July 7 bombings that claimed 56 lives.

Thursday's bombs partly detonated and contained homemade explosives, police said.

The photos, taken from closed-circuit TV cameras, showed one man wearing a dark shirt with "New York" across the front running through a subway station. Another was shown on the upper level of a double-decker bus, while the other two men were shown at separate subway stations.

The man who was slain by officers at the Stockwell subway station around 10 a.m. "challenged and refused to obey police instructions," said Police Commissioner Ian Blair.

"This shooting is directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation," he said.

Witnesses said the man, who appeared to be South Asian, was hit multiple times.

Passengers said a man ran onto a train at Stockwell station in south London. Witnesses said plainclothes police chased him, he tripped, and police then shot him.

"They pushed him onto the floor and unloaded five shots into him. He's dead," witness Mark Whitby told the British Broadcasting Corp. "He looked like a cornered fox. He looked petrified."

Britain is home to many immigrants from the South Asian countries of Pakistan, India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, among others.

Another witnesses, Anthony Larkin, told the BBC that the man appeared to have "a bomb belt and wires coming out."

Police shouted "Get down! Get down!" he said, adding that "people were panicking and I heard shots being fired."

Whitby, however, said the man did not appear to have been carrying anything but was wearing a thick coat that looked padded. Temperatures in overcast London on Friday were in the 70s.