Four arrested over London bombings

Story Highlights

• Police arrested four people over 7/7 attacks on London's transport system
• Suspects include three men and a woman, between the ages of 22 and 34
• UK counter terror police have been conducting covert investigations
• Arrests come shortly after five British bomb plotters were sentenced to life

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LONDON, England (CNN) -- British police arrested the wife of one of the July 7, 2005 suicide bombers as well as three other suspects in early morning terror-related raids Wednesday.

While the identities of the suspects have yet to be officially released, sources told CNN the woman being held is 29-year-old Hasina Patel, the widow of Mohammad Sidique Khan, one of the 7/7 suicide bombers.

Patel and two men aged of 30 and 34 were arrested by officers from the Metropolitan Police Service Counter Terrorism Command in the West Yorkshire, England area. A fourth man, 22, was arrested in West Midlands.

A statement from Scotland Yard said, the four were arrested under the country's terrorism laws "on suspicion of the commission, preparation, or instigation of acts of terrorism."

The arrests were made in a "pre-planned, intelligence-led operation," the statement said, as part of an ongoing investigation into the July 7 attacks on London's transportation system that killed 52 people and injured 700.

The suspects are being held in a central London police station while police are searching five addresses in West Yorkshire and two in Birmingham for evidence to link the suspects to the 7/7 attacks. No charges have been filed as yet.

CNN's International Security Correspondent Paula Newton said the arrests follow an extensive and lengthy covert operation launched by Scotland Yard following the July 7 London bombings on the city's transport system that killed 52 people and injured 700.

Newton said the investigation was an effort to discover who, if anyone, helped the 7/7 suicide bombers. The operation was also an effort to get into the neighborhoods where the suicide bombers lived to set up informants and surveillance.

Prime suspects during the covert operation were friends and relatives of the four suicide bombers. But Newton said that many of them expressed shock at what the four men had done and denied any involvement in the attacks.

Newton said more arrests were expected when authorities, during the first arrests made in the investigation a few months ago, released details about the police investigation and said there would be more arrests.

"This remains a painstaking investigation with a substantial amount of information being analyzed and investigated," a police statement said Wednesday.

The statement added that investigations are being conducted to identify possible accomplices involved in the July 7 attack.

"We need to know who else, apart from the bombers, knew what they were planning," the statement said. "Did anyone encourage them? Did anyone help them with money or accommodation?"

In late January, British police arrested seven people in the Birmingham area who allegedly planned to kidnap, torture and behead a British Muslim soldier in the UK. Two of them were released without being charged.

These most recent arrests come approximately one week after five Britons were jailed for life after being found guilty of plotting to carry out al Qaeda-inspired bomb attacks across Britain on targets ranging from a nightclub to a shopping mall.

CNN's Zein Basravi contributed to this report.

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