LONDON, July 22: Police tore through a London Underground station on Friday and shot dead a fleeing suspect who had leapt over the ticket barriers as stunned commuters looked on. At Stockwell station, in a down-at-heel corner of south London, the shooting around 0900 GMT left residents and travellers in shock. The drama unfolded less than 24 hours after four bombs failed to go off properly on three subway trains and a double-decker bus, two weeks to the day after bombs killed 56 people.

London’s Metropolitan Police commissioner Ian Blair later said the shooting was ‘directly linked to the ongoing and expanding anti-terrorist operation’.

The incident followed an urgent appeal by police to trace four men they were hunting in connection with Thursday’s explosions.

Police issued photos of the four suspects from closed-circuit television cameras on the city’s transport network and asked for help in tracing them.

“We are urgently seeking the public’s assistance. It is time for the public to do what they are very good at, which is support investigations,” Andy Hayman, Chief of Specialist Operations for London police told a news conference.

One man was arrested in connection with Thursday’s explosions near Stockwell underground station, where the man was shot earlier, police said.

They declined to comment on whether the man detained was one of the four.

Late in the evening, Sky Television quoted police sources as saying that the man shot dead by police was not one of the four bombers who are believed to have tried to attack the city’s transport system on Thursday.

“This is what I am picking up from security sources that the man who was shot this morning at Stockwell tube wasn’t one of those four bombers that police are hunting,” the network’s reporter said.

A spokesman for London’s Metropolitan Police said only: “The gentleman shot at Stockwell today has yet to be identified, so it would be impossible to link him to anything at this stage.”

WITNESSES RECALL PANIC: Witnesses of the shooting incident recalled they had seen armed police charge into the Stockwell station before officials told them to leave the scene as people poured out of the subway entrance.

Mark Whitby said he was sitting on a train which had its doors open at a platform. He heard people yelling ‘Get down, get down!’

“An Asian guy ran on to the train. As he ran, he was hotly pursued by what I knew to be three plain-clothes police officers,” he told the BBC.

“As the man got on the train I looked at his face. He looked from left to right, but he basically looked like a cornered rabbit.

“He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the floor.

“One of the police officers was holding a black automatic pistol in his left hand. They held it down to him and unloaded five shots into him. I saw it. He’s dead, five shots, he’s dead,” he said.

“It was no more than five yards away from where I was sitting.”

Chris Wells, 28, a company manager, said he was travelling north on the subway and got off at Stockwell, where he saw policemen, some armed, dash into the station as a man leapt over the ticket barriers.

“There were at least 20 of them (policemen) and they were carrying big black guns,” he said.

“The next thing I saw was this guy jump over the barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting ‘Get out, get out!’”.

Traffic was diverted from the interchange outside Stockwell station – one stop away from Oval, one of the scenes of Thursday’s incidents — and workers were evacuated from the area.

People in nearby buildings peered out of windows as police held back onlookers on the street.

Ambulances and police cars were parked within the cordon.

Workers at a fruit and flower stall directly opposite Stockwell station said they saw police officials charge into the Underground.

“I saw the armed police running past us. We were taken aback,” one of the workers, Brenda Commatteo, said.

“We turned round and said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s the armed police’, probably about a dozen of them. Some were in plain clothes, some in uniform, the guns were ready. They were just shouting, ‘Move, police!’”

Her co-worker, Gillian Breen, 39, added: “A young lady we spoke to, we sat her down and she just told us that she’d been in the Tube and heard gunshots. Then we were moved on within 60 seconds.”

Commatteo said: “I feel worried, especially after July 7 (the date of the suicide bombings), we were moved away then. Everybody is getting fed up of it, but what can you do until you’ve caught them?”

She joked that she had no fear of theft from her untended stall. “I think it’s quite well protected over there!”

Residents milled about the scene, waiting for the Tube to reopen or just coming to terms with the mayhem in their neighbourhood.

“It’s happening right on my territory, it’s horrific,” Tony Sobogun, a 28-year-old promoter, said at the cordon.

“London needs to wake up and smell the coffee: it’s real. For years it’s been a safe place. I just can’t imagine it.

“The moment they release the barrier I’m going to walk right through,” he added.

“It’s very, very frightening,” Stockwell resident Stanley Hinson said.

“You tend to hear about this happening but you never think it’s going to get close up to you. It makes you panic. I’ll be feeling very nervous now.”

“I’m shocked,” market researcher Raymond Peprah said at the scene, down the road from his office.

“I thought July 7 was a one-off, it’s too much now.”

He said the proximity of the incident to his workplace had made him realize the terror threat was vivid.

“That’s where it actually hit home. Now it’s just walking distance and it’s affecting my day. It’s hard.”

Man arrested: Police evacuated a train station on Friday in the central English city of Birmingham while arresting a man there under anti-terror laws.

They said explosives officers were dealing with two suspect suitcases during the operation at Snow Hill station, the second biggest station in the city where 20,000 people were evacuated earlier this month amid a terror threat. —Reuters/AFP