Tube passengers were horrified yesterday morning after a man was shot dead on a train by police investigating the attempted bombings in London.
The fatal shooting at Stockwell tube station in south London happened at 10am when armed plain clothes police officers shot a man they believed was an accomplice of the bombers as he tried to board a train.
It is understood officers followed the man after he came out of a nearby house police had put under surveillance. Officers were hoping he would lead them to the bombers.
When he went into the station they told him to stop, but the Asian man bolted down an escalator instead and tried to get on a train before he was, according to witnesses, shot five times in the head by an officer with an automatic pistol.
The man is not thought to be one of the four men being hunted in connection with the bombings.
In a further development one man was arrested last night in connection with the police investigation in Stock-well, close to where the fatal shooting happened.
Earlier yesterday at a press conference, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said the shooting of the man was ?directly linked? to anti-terror operations.
Sir Ian said his officers opened fire after the man challenged and refused to obey police.
People evacuated from the south London station described seeing armed police chasing the suspect before opening fire as he fell inside a train carriage.
Witness Mark Whitby said the young Asian man was shot five times at close range after he had jumped on a train.
Mr Whitby said the drama began as the tube train sat stationary with its doors open in Stockwell station.
He said he heard people shouting ?Get down, get down!?
He said: ?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 said the man tripped and was also pushed to the floor then one of the officers shot him five times.
?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.?
Mr Whitby continued: ?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, like a cornered fox. He looked absolutely petrified.?
Mr Whitby said the man was wearing a baseball cap and a thick, padded jacket which he thought looked out of place due to the recent warm weather.
?Maybe he might have had something concealed under there, I don?t know.?
Mr Whitby said he crouched down and ran from the station as fast as he could. ?I just was worried about bullets flying around. I?ve never seen people move so fast in all my life. Absolute mayhem.
?It was a very, very distressing sight to watch, and to hear as well.?
Chris Wells, a 28-year-old company manager, said he saw about 20 police officers, some of them armed, rushing into the station before a man jumped over the barriers with police giving chase.
According to another witness police were lying in wait for the bomb suspect as he boarded the Underground train at Stockwell station.
Rob Lowe, 33, an art director for Good For Nothing magazine, who was on his way to work from his home in Balham, south London, was in the carriage when armed officers shot the man dead.
He said: ?The tube was stationary and then a man came on who I presume now to be a plainclothes policeman, but at the time I didn?t know who he was.
?He was looking quite shifty, getting up and sitting back down again. I felt a bit awkward around him.
?And then he seemed to shout at some people on the other platform who then all came rushing.
?The tube suddenly filled up with loads of people running down to the end of my carriage. Then I heard probably four or five loud bangs and saw a bit of smoke.?
A large area around Stock-well tube station, an inter-change for the Northern and Victoria lines in south London, was cordoned off and traffic approaching the area ground to a halt.
