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Determined but jittery London re-opens for business

Commuters returned to work in London yesterday, at the start of the first full week since bombers killed at least 52 people on a bus and subway trains. Many travelers said they would defy the attackers by using public transportation as normal, but some were too afraid and took taxis instead.

The British Transport Police have said London transportation is re-opened for business this week -- although a few sections of the underground rail system affected by the attacks remained closed -- and that commuters should return to work. At least 52 people were killed in the attacks last Thursday, while 700 were injured, 60 of whom remained in hospitals.

Mayor Ken Livingstone took the subway to work yesterday to send the message that Londoners should "carry on."

"We are going to work. We carry on our lives," he said. "We don't let a small group of terrorists change the way we live."

Underscoring how London remained tense in the attacks' aftermath, police yesterday closed several streets where most government offices are located for about a half-hour after a suspicious package was found.

For investigators, yesterday was another pressure-packed day of sifting through subterranean debris and checking tips from the public.

British intelligence officials met over the weekend with their counterparts from the US, Canada and about two dozen European countries to brief them on the attacks and the investigation, police said.

Security officials in Poland said they searched the home of a British citizen of Pakistani origin in Lublin in connection with the bombings.

Scotland Yard said yesterday that it had identified the first of the victims -- Susan Levy, 53, a mother-of-two from Hertfordshire, while University College London said its employee Gladys Wundowa had also been killed. Forensics experts have warned it could take days or weeks to put names to the bodies, many of which were mangled in the blasts.

Police also said they were still working to recover the remaining bodies from one of the trains damaged in the blasts.

More than 20m below the surface, teams of workers -- clad in white suits and wearing face masks to protect them from the dust -- dealt with sweltering heat and rats as they removed some of the bodies from the train wreckage.

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