BIRMINGHAM, England — Police captured a fugitive suspected of trying to bomb a London subway train, shooting him with a stun gun in a predawn raid Wednesday as a nationwide manhunt for three more would-be bombers gathered speed.
The arrest of Yasin Hassan Omar came as U.S. officials said Zambia had detained Haroon Rashid Aswat, who was sought in connection with earlier transit bombings that killed 52 people in London.
Aswat, 30, a British citizen of Indian descent, piqued the interest of investigators when they discovered that about 20 calls had been placed from his cellphone to some of the men who set off the July 7 bombs.
Investigators are studying possible links between the July 7 blasts and the botched bombings last week.
The capture of Omar at a town house in a Birmingham public housing complex was accompanied by three other arrests in another raid in the city, authorities said. But the trio arrested in the second raid did not appear to be the other suspects. Police also searched an area in London near an apartment where Omar, a 24-year-old Somali immigrant, lived and allegedly plotted last week's failed attacks on London's transport system.
Omar was arrested in this industrial city northwest of London in a working-class complex whose population is a mix of South Asian and African immigrants and British retirees, authorities said.
"This is of course an important development," said Peter Clarke, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. "However, I must stress how important it is for the public to remain watchful and alert. We are still looking for the other three men whose pictures we have released and who we believe tried to set off bombs on 21st July."
The raid in a cul-de-sac in the Hay Mills neighborhood began about 4:30 a.m., police said. A team of at least 40 police officers, some wearing military-style fatigues and black berets, stormed the house amid detonations apparently caused by tear-gas containers or flash-bang grenades, witnesses said. Someone shouted the fugitive's name, a neighbor said.
"I definitely heard the name Hassan shouted twice," said Katy Stewart, 31, who lives across the street. "We could see white smoke coming from between the houses. And there were two [policemen] in black dressed in black motorcycle helmets."
Omar allegedly resisted the officers, who after a brief struggle shot him with a Taser and subdued him, police said.
