British police hunting London bombers admitted killing a Brazilian electrician by mistake ? a blunder that dealt a blow to their efforts to track down militants they fear could strike again. Police expressed regret for the tragedy and named the innocent victim as Jean Charles de Menezes, a 27-year-old electrician who had been living in London for three years. Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim demanded clarification from Britain about the shooting. The victim?s cousin, Lady Menezes, said: ?It?s an injustice, something needs to be done.?

Police are still holding two suspects in connection with Thursday?s failed bomb attacks on London, but are continuing to hunt the four men believed to have carried the explosives, London?s police chief said yesterday. ?They are still with us and will be for some time I think, but we are still anxious for any sighting of the four individuals or any knowledge of them or where they have been,? Metropolitan Police Commissioner Ian Blair told Sky News television.

?There are inquiries all over London at the moment and indeed the rest of Britain.? Asked if the suspects were still in Britain, he said: ?We have no reason to believe they are not.?`

?Somebody else could be shot?

He also said it had not yet been established that last Thursday?s attacks were linked to similar bombings 2 weeks before that killed 52 people in London. ?We have no proof that they are linked but clearly there is a pattern here, isn?t there, of four attacks ? three on tubes and one on buses?, he said.

For his part, Blair confirmed the police had a shoot-to-kill policy to stop suspected suicide bombers detonating their explosives: ?This is not a Metropolitan policy, this is a national policy and I think we are quite comfortable that the policy is right, but of course these are fantastically difficult times ... there are still officers having to make those calls as we speak?, he said. ?Somebody else could be shot.?

Thursday?s attempted attacks came two weeks after four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters in similar attacks. Police were hunting four men who tried to bomb London?s transport system. They hence chased and shot dead a man on Friday who had been under surveillance and refused orders to halt.

Security experts said police had clearly adopted a ?shoot-to-kill? policy in confronting suspected bombers. Anti-terrorism expert Robert Ayers of the Royal Institute of International Affairs said police have ?demonstrated that they are operating on the premise right now that if they suspect that someone is a bomber, and that the public is going to be endangered by him, they have shoot-to-kill orders?.

Massoud Shadjareh of the Islamic Human Rights Commission said the killing was a direct consequence of British police officers being sent to Israel to receive training on how to prevent suicide bombings. ?To give license to people to shoot to kill just like that, on the basis of suspicion, is very frightening?, Azzam Tamimi of the Muslim Association of Britain said.

But former London police chief John Stevens defended the tactics. ?I sent teams to Israel and other countries hit by suicide bombers where we learned a terrible truth,? he wrote in the News of the World. ?There is only one sure way to stop a suicide bomber determined to fulfil his mission ? destroy his brain instantly, utterly. That means shooting him with devastating power in the head, killing him immediately.?

Previous attacks

In one of the biggest police probes in British criminal history, security sources indicated there could be links between the two London attacks. The sources, cited by British media, said two of the July 7 bombers attended a whitewater rafting trip at the same centre in Wales as some of the July 21 bombers.

This was based on evidence discovered in rucksacks left behind by the failed bombers. Detectives believe the trip could have been used as a bonding exercise.

The Abu Hafs al Masri Brigade, an al Qaeda-linked group, has claimed responsibility for Thursday?s bombing attempts and those of July 7, but the group?s claims of responsibility for previous attacks in Europe have been discredited by security experts.

London?s Mayor Ken Livingstone argued that terrorism was an international scourge that could strike anywhere and he was dismissive of the decision by Italian soccer club Inter Milan to cancel a pre-season tour of England. ?I think that it is a very silly thing to do because it is playing the terrorists? game. They want to change the way we live. The terrorists, I am sure, will be celebrating their decision?, he said.

Paul MAJENDIE