London police yesterday named two of the four men they suspect of trying to blow themselves up on London's transport system last Thursday, and gave more detailed accounts of their movements before and after the bomb attempts.
They also confirmed they are linking a fifth bomb, found on Saturday, to the same gang.
Thousands of officers are still hunting for the four would-be suicide bombers, and possibly a fifth, who abandoned a device in a plastic container, identical to those used in the other four attempts, in woodland west of the city.
Security sources say the bombers could have access to more explosives, and the pressure is mounting to catch them before they try again.
Detectives have identified the man they think attempted to set off a device on board the No 26 bus on Hackney Road in east London on Thursday as Muktar Said-Ibrahim (27), also known as Muktar Mohammed-Said. They said he was associated with, or recently visited, 58 Curtis House, in Ladderswood Way, New Southgate, north London, one of a number of addresses raided by police yesterday.
A Metropolitan police spokeswoman said two men were arrested "in the vicinity of Curtis Way" yesterday afternoon, one aged 29 and the other's age unknown, bringing to five the number being held by anti-terrorist officers in connection with the investigation.
But police sources said none of the five are the suspected bombers, and no further explosives had been found since Saturday's discovery of a device in bushes in Little Wormwood Scrubs, west London.
Said-Ibrahim got on the bus in the Bank area at 12.53pm and got off at 1.05pm, after failing to trigger his device.
The man who tried to blow up a tube train on the Victoria line, between Oxford Circus and Warren Street stations, was named by police as Yasin Hassan Omar (24). Omar, whose bomb was in a small purple rucksack, was seen vaulting over the ticket barrier and running from Warren Street station at 12.40pm.
Two other, as yet unnamed, men tried to trigger devices on tube trains near Oval and at Shepherd's Bush. Both ran from these stations and police have now traced their escape routes.
They think the Oval suspect, who got on the tube at Stockwell at 12.25pm with Ibrahim-Said and Omar, escaped from Oval station at 12.35pm, despite members of the public trying to hold him back, and ran along Brixton Road, abandoning his navy sweatshirt with a white New York logo at the junction of Gosling Way and Mostyn Gardens. He was last spotted in Tindall Street at 12.45pm.
The Shepherd's Bush suspect, who was wearing a dark blue baseball cap and carrying a small rucksack, got on the tube at Westbourne Park just after 12.20pm.
When he failed to set off his device, he climbed out of the window at the end of the carriage and ran several hundred yards along the track before escaping through back gardens.
He ran along McFarlane Road and past the BBC building in Wood Lane.
The last sighting of him was on the A40, one of the main dual carriageways leading out of the capital to the west.
In another worrying development, deputy assistant commissioner Peter Clarke, head of Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch, confirmed that the device found by a member of the public in bushes at Little Wormwood Scrubs in west London on Saturday had "clear similarities" to the other four bombs, strengthening the suggestion that another bomber linked to the gang is also at large.
Detectives are continuing to investigate suspected links between the July 21st bombers and the four suicide bombers who killed 52 people in London on July 7th.