Authorities are pursuing information on 22-year-old British suicide attacker Shehzad Tanweer, who reportedly studied at a religious school in Pakistan last year, according to security officials.

“They provided us with names of certain individuals for information following the London bombing. We are checking the linkges here,” a senior security official told AFP.

“We have asked the British government to provide specific information regarding the movement of suspected bombers in Pakistan,” added the official.

Pakistani authorities are also investigating whether Tanweer had links to two militant groups, understood to be Jaish-e-Mohammed and Lashkar-e-Taiba, both involved in terror violence in Jammu and Kashmir.

Both are known to have ties with Osama bin Laden’s Al-Qaida network.

Jaish is loosely linked with the Jamia Manzoorul Islamia School, Lahore, which denied British-press reports that Tanweer had studied there. “We have no knowledge that anyone with the name of Shehzad Tanweer was enrolled in our madrassa.

Washington, July 15
The alleged bomb-builder in the July 7 London terror attacks has been arrested in Cairo where he is being interrogated, ABC news reported today citing sources including the FBI.

“ABC News has exclusive information, as we said, that the worldwide manhunt for the man that the police think has built those bombs has ... been caught in Cairo and (is) being interrogated right now,” ABC television said.

“The FBI in North Carolina joined the search,” it added.

“Authorities in Egypt tell ABC News he was tracked down and taken into custody overnight in suburban Cairo. British authorities had initiated a worldwide manhunt for 33-year-old Magdy Nashar who left England two weeks before the bombings. The police say it was he who helped the bombers set up their bomb factory,” the network reported.

As the confirmed death toll from the July 7 bombings rose to 54, with some 700 injured, investigators were hoping that fuzzy security camera images of one of the bombers, aged just 18, would encourage more witnesses to come forward.

In London, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair confirmed on BBC radio that there was “a Pakistan connection” to the bombings, in which three of the four suspected perpetrators were Britons of Pakistani origin.

But he added: “There are also connections in other countries.”

“What we expect to find at some stage is that there is a clear Al-Qaida link, a clear Al-Qaida approach,” he said.

Meanwhile, as the police hunt for the London bombings mastermind, investigations here have revealed that a national terrorist network may be behind the last week’s serial blasts.

The discovery that the fourth bomber, a Jamican-born Briton, came from a different background than the other three, Britons of Pakistani origin, suggests that the bombers were part of a wider network.

After the police released CCTV images of Hasib Hussain yesterday, the man who blew up the bus here — rucksack on his back — at Luton station at 7.20 AM on July 7, anti-terrorist officers and Mi5 are trying to track down other members of the terrorist unit.

The police are hunting the London bombings mastermind and an Egyptian chemistry student who disappeared from his Leeds home and detectives said they are also trying to crack the network thought to have given the dead suspects planning, logistical and bomb-making support. — AFP, PTI

New Delhi, July 15
The Government of India has got reports that Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Toiba (LET) is poised to launch new terrorist operations in India and that the outfit is currently in the process of recruiting large number of youngsters who will be trained in the new training camps recently set up in Pakistan.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is expected to raise this issue with the American leadership as he embarks on his bilateral visit to the U.S.A tomorrow noon, well placed sources said today.

The West is certain to be more sensitised to the issue of terrorism than it did before, particularly in the wake of July 7 London blasts.

Pakistan Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, according to Pakistani media reports today, has cancelled his visit to the USA and Canada which was to take place later this month. Though domestic reasons have been cited for the cancellation, the diplomatic nuances are unmistakable; that Pakistan finds itself under the international scanner once again for being a cradle of terrorism.

The US State Department also stated in unambiguous terms yesterday that Pakistan must close all terrorist training camps. A State Department spokesman went on record saying: “We have repeatedly made it clear to the Pakistan government that it must continue its efforts to close all military training camps and block all infiltration across the LOC in Kashmir.”

External Affairs Minister K Natwar Singh had told a BBC correspondent in London last week that India had, and could, produce photographic evidence of terror camps in Pakistan.

Washington, July 15
Scientists have discovered a Jupiter-sized planet in the constellation Cygnus that is 1,500 times the size of Earth and has three suns.

The suns are as close to one another as the one in our own solar system is to Saturn, a distance about 10 times that between the Earth and its sun, according to a discovery reported yesterday in the journal ‘Nature’.

The discovery, scientists say, could shake up theories of how planets are formed and open the prospect that there may be several more planets than had been previously assumed.

“The environment in which this planet exists is quite spectacular,” said Maciej Konacki, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology and lead author of the report.

“With three suns, the sky view must be out of this world — literally and figuratively.”

The three stars collectively make up a system known as HD188753, and are about 149 light years from Earth. — PTI