Suspected Bomber on Tube Shot Dead.

Sky News is reporting that a suspected suicide bomber has been shot dead at Stockwell Underground station. According to their reporter at New Scotland Yard this has been confirmed by police.

A precis of what the reporter said is that the police hve a shoot to kill policy if there is a suspected bomber about to set off a bomb. A shot to the head is called for.

Nosemonkey at Europhobia is reporting on this.

As he points out at 11.02, Met Police confirm the shooting. Five times he was shot.

BBC site and Sky.

I hope to hell for all our sakes that he was indeed a bomber. If they’ve gunned down some poor schlep in error this will just increase the hatred.

11.15. Breaking news on Sky. Armed police have surrounded a mosque in East London.

From Rob in comments. Aldgate Mosque it is.

Robin Grant is also up and blogging this.

Robin quoting from the BBC:

Mr Whitby, told BBC News: “I saw an Asian guy run onto the train hotly pursued by three plain-clothes police officers.”

“One of them was carrying a black handgun - it looked like an automatic - they pushed him to the floor, bundled on top of him and unloaded five shots into him.”

As Nosemonkey says:

Are you really going to push someone to the floor and shoot them FIVE times if they're a suspected suicide bomber? Fucking risky, wouldn't you say? This is more like execution-style...

I may be well out of step here with what others think but we’d better damn well hope that guy had a bomb on him. Executing someone for being Asian isn’t going to help race relations now is it?

11.25. Sky is now reporting (from a security source) that the man shot at Stockwell had been identified as one of the failed bombers from yesterday (presumably via the CCTV systems).

Reuters website seems to be overloaded.

11.35. The mosque surrounded by police? East London Mosque, not Aldgage as above. Apparently someone phoned in a claim that there was a bomb in the mosque and threatened to blow it. The police were there to evacuate and then search the building. Nothing has been found and that incident is now standing down.

That is the way it should work. All are deserving of equal protection under the law. Don’t let us forget that.

JohnB is less than enamoured of the practice of shooting suspects.

The Guardian has a number of eyewitness reports. Whoever the guy was and whatever he was doing, carrying a bomb or not, I don’t think there can be all that much doubt that he was executed.

Robin:

BBC News 24 have just had an eyewitness on air - Graham Eves(?). It looks like the guy that was shot had previously left a bag on a Victoria line train from Brixton (the one I would have got this morning if I hadn’t been running late), jumped off off the train at Stockwell - his bomb (in a back bag) then failed to explode (more smell smoke etc) once the train had left the train and was on the way to the next stop at Vauxhall - hence the station closure at Vauxhall. The bomber must have then been chased back onto the tube at Stockwell by the police and then shot.

As he says, this is nuts. Shoot to stop someone exploding a bomb? Yes. If you’re sure. Shoot someone, five times, when you’ve captured him? No, I don’t think so.

Yes, I know, this is all confused right now, all still swathed in a fog of ignorance, but I hope they didn’t do what I, unfortunately, think they did. I hope I’m proved wrong.

12.00 Sky again. Their reporter (who’s been pretty good so far) thinks the police had the dead guy under surveillance all the time.

Various speculation that the SAS were involved. No, wouldn’t be surprised.

OK, I don’t think we’re going to hear all that much more today. Who he was, why they shot him, whether he did indeed put a bomb on the tube, whether he was actually wired up...these things’ll come out over the next few days.

Follow Nosemonkey and Robin for further updates.

Update 23/72005. I realise that my pondering about the shooting was somewhat unpopular. From Robin Grant today comes the following links. A brief press release from the police:

A police statement said: "We believe we now know the identity of the man shot at Stockwell Underground station by police, although he is still subject to formal identification.

"We are now satisfied that he was not connected with the incidents of Thursday 21st July 2005.

"For somebody to lose their life in such circumstances is a tragedy and one that the Metropolitan Police Service regrets."

Wrong guy. Yes, heat of the chase, he should have stopped, the police didn’t know he didn’t have a bomb. Dead, five shots. As above, I’d hoped to be shown to be wrong.