Pair questioned over Parsons Green Tube bombing

Police investigating the Parsons Green Tube bombing are questioning two suspects after searching three properties over the weekend.

An 18-year-old was arrested at Dover ferry port on Saturday morning and a 21-year-old was arrested at a fried chicken shop in Hounslow on Saturday night. Neither have been named.

Police searched the 21-year-old’s home in Stanwell, Surrey, on Sunday.

The younger man is suspected of planting the device, which exploded on a District Line train on Friday morning, injuring 30 people.

He and the other man, reported to be from Syria, are being questioned by police on suspicion of offences under the Terrorism Act.

Leader of Spelthorne Borough Council Ian Harvey, whose ward is Sunbury East, said the 18-year-old is understood to be an Iraqi orphan who had moved to Britain when he was 15.

Both men are believed to have spent time in the care of Penelope and Ronald Jones, who received MBEs for services to children and families in 2010.

They have been highly respected foster parents for almost 40 years and looked after up to 300 children, including eight refugees.

Cllr Harvey told the Press Association: "One thing I understand is that he (the 18-year-old) was an Iraqi refugee who came here aged 15 – his parents died in Iraq."

Of the other suspect, he said: "I think it is widely known that this person who lives at (the Stanwell) property was a former foster child at the property which was raided."

Mr and Mrs Jones’s home in Sunbury on Thames was searched by armed police on Saturday morning and is still being examined by counter-terrorism investigators.

Footage has emerged of a man in Sunbury carrying a Lidl bag, similar to the one the suspected device was hidden in, around an hour and a half before the attack.

The man was seen on camera at 6.50am reportedly leaving a house which police would later search.

On Sunday afternoon, the UK’s terror threat level was lowered from its highest point of ‘critical’ to ‘severe’, meaning an attack is now "highly likely", rather than "imminent".

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre (JTAC), which sets the terror threat level, had decided "sufficient progress has been made" to lower it.

The Parsons Green investigation is "still an ongoing operation", she added.

Meanwhile, all but one of those injured in the attack have been able to leave hospital. As well as injuries from the fire, many people were hurt in the stampede of passengers trying to escape the bomb.

(c) Sky News 2017: Pair questioned over Parsons Green Tube bombing