Further raids in Australia over car bomb attempts

Police in Australia have questioned four more people and conducted new raids in connection with last week's attempted car bombings in the UK.

Four people, all believed to be doctors, were questioned, but have not been arrested.

According to reports, searches have been conducted at a number of hospitals in Western Australia, Perth and the outback mining town of Kalgoorlie. Computers, files and other materials have been seized during the search.

Police have also been granted an extra 96 hours to continue questioning Dr Mohammed Haneef, who was detained at Brisbane airport in Queensland on Monday as he tried to leave the country to go to India.

Thousands of files on the Indian doctor's computer are being examined by police.

Seven other people are being held by police in the UK over the attacks. They include Kafeel Ahmed and Dr Bilal Abdullah, who were arrested at Glasgow airport after a burning Jeep Cherokee was driven into the doors of the airport's main terminal on Saturday; Dr Mohammed Asha, 26, and his wife Dana Asha, 27, who were arrested on the M6 near Cheshire on Saturday; Dr Sabeel Ahmed - believed to be Kafeel Ahmed's brother. The 26-year-old was arrested in Liverpool on Saturday; Two men, aged 28 and 25, who were arrested in Paisley on Sunday. They are believed to be trainee doctors.

All eight suspects have links to the NHS.

Kafeel Ahmed was badly burned in the Glasgow attack and has now been transferred to a specialist burns unit at Glasgow Royal Infirmary, where he remains under armed guard. He is still in a critical condition.

It has also emerged that both Ahmed brothers had applied to work as doctors in Western Australia, but were rejected because their qualifications and references were not deemed to meet the required standard.

Kafeel Ahmed is also reported to have worked and studied at Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland for three years - between 2001 and 2004. He is understood to have been an aeronautical engineering student at the university and lived in rented accommodation in Hampton Place with other students. He is then believed to have moved to study computational fluid dynamics at Anglia Polytechnic University, before reportedly returning to Bangalore in India in August 2005.

The first of the attempted bombings took place last Friday morning in London. Two Mercedes, containing petrol, gas cylinders and nails, were found in London's West End - one outside the Tiger Tiger nightclub in The Haymarket and the other in a nearby street. The devices were defused.

The following day, the attack at Glasgow airport took place.

On Friday, a coalition of Muslim groups including the Conservative Muslim Forum, Islamic Relief and the Islamic Society of Britain going under the name Muslims United took out a series of newspaper advertisements condemning the attacks. The adverts, which use the slogan 'Not in our name', says that the attacks are contrary to Islamic teachings.

(KMcA)