Major breakthrough after the arrest of Omar Hassan.

LONDON - Police interrogated Thursday a Somali suspected of last week's failed bid to stage bomb attacks in London and made nine more arrests as they hunted three other fugitives amid fears of wider terror plots.


In a breakthrough, police confirmed late Wednesday they had arrested Yasin Hassan Omar, one of four suspects who partially detonated bombs on London subway trains and a bus on July 21, in a bungled attempt to repeat the carnage of July 7.


Though a common pattern has emerged, police have not confirmed a link between the two attacks, the first one of which was now reported to be part of a wider plot involving 16 bombs, including nail-studded devices.


Police in London were Thursday interrogating the Somali-born Hassan Omar, 24, who was arrested by police in a pre-dawn raid Wednesday on a house in the central English city of Birmingham.


Officers zapped Hassan Omar with a shot from a Taser stun gun before overpowering him and driving him back to London where he is being held at the top-security Paddington Green police station.


On Thursday police arrested nine other men at two properties in south London in connection with the July 21 attacks, though police sources said none of the nine was believed to be among the remaining fugitives.


AFP reporters noticed Thursday the presence of more armed police in London Underground train stations.


Detectives have a race against time to persuade Hassan Omar, a naturalised Briton, to give them whatever information he may have about the bomb plot and its perpetrators as anti-terror laws - which are being reviewed by the government following calls for them to be toughened - allow a terror suspect to be held for a maximum of two weeks without charge.


Police chiefs have urged Tony Blair to extend the detention time to up to three months, but The Independent newspaper said the prime minister favours allowing rolling two-week periods although no decision has been made.


The arrest of Hassan Omar - believed to have tried to bomb a train in a tunnel between Oxford Street and Warren Street in central London - gave a major boost to Britain's largest police investigation, but senior officers remained focused on the three suspects who are still on the run.


"I must emphasise that until these men are arrested they remain a threat," said Peter Clarke, the Metropolitan Police's anti-terror chief.


Only one of the other fugitives has been named - 27-year-old Muktar Said Ibrahim, also known as Muktar Mohammed Said, who migrated to England from Eritrea as a child.


But police have released pictures caught on closed circuit television of the other two suspects, including a fresh image revealed Wednesday of the man accused of trying to detonate a bomb on a train in west London on July 21.


The Asian-looking suspect, who has a shaved head and short beard, is pictured on board a bus travelling to south London after the bungled attacks. He is wearing dark trousers, a white vest and a wristwatch on his left arm.


Adding to the sense of urgency to catch the men before they strike again, British newspapers said the July 7 team, who killed 52 people in London, left a car packed with up to 16 bombs, offering evidence of a widespread terror plot.


Police at Scotland Yard, however, refused to comment on the chilling X-ray photographs of a bottle-shaped, nail-studded bomb that were plastered across the front pages of most dailies after being leaked to the ABC television network in the United States.


"How big was the terror plot?" asked the left-leaning Independent newspaper next to a large picture of the sinister weapon.


"The terrorist cell ... may have been planning to throw nail bombs into a nightclub or a football crowd," it said in a page one news story.


The bombs were found in a rental car abandoned at a railway station in Luton, north of the British capital, by the four suicide bombers, who boarded trains to King's Cross exactly three weeks ago, newspapers reported.


Some of the homemade explosives, thought to be a mix of acetone-based chemicals, are in bottle shaped containers with dozens of nails packed around them and held in place by cling film. The nails are designed to act as shrapnel, the Guardian said. Others are flat pancake-shaped bombs.


The Times newspaper, meanwhile, reported that the devices used by the first suicide squad and the four would-be bombers two weeks later were made by the same person.


"The nature and number of bombs points to the existence of a large and well-equipped terrorist cell intent on a sustained campaign of attacks," it said. Police have yet to directly link the July 21 and July 7 attacks.


In a complex web of investigation, police arrested three more men in a raid at a second home in east Birmingham on Wednesday, while three women were also detained in London on suspicion of "harbouring offenders", police said.


A total of 17 people, including Hassan Omar, remained in custody in relation to the July 21 plot, according to police.

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