Teenager suspect in Tube blast

Foster child apprehended in Dover

A TEENAGER suspected of being the London Tube bucket bomber is thought to be a foster child housed by an elderly British couple.

On Saturday morning officers in Dover, a ferry port on the south-east coast from which passenger ships sail to France, arrested an 18-year-old man and then partially evacuated the area, recovering several items.

The man, the youngest arrested over a terror attack in the UK, was tracked by facial-recognition technology.

Authorities have released few details about the suspect, but a witness who saw the arrest in Dover said the man did not appear to be English.

“He was white, not Arabic, but he wasn’t English,” Daniel Vaselicu, who was waiting in the ferry terminal, said.

Home Secretary Amber Rudd said the bomb was “a serious IED”.

“It was good fortune it did so little damage,” she said.

Ms Rudd said 26 people were injured by what witnesses described as a “fireball” that erupted from the device, with other victims wounded in the ensuing stampede at Parsons Green.

Hours after the man’s arrest, police raided a suburban London house belonging to Ron and Penny Jones, who received MBEs in 2009 for services to children and families.

The couple worked for refugee support group Elmbridge CAN which helps run resettlement schemes.

Neighbour Carrie Hill, 38, said: “Police told me there was a bomb found in the garden and firearms hidden under the floorboards.”

An unnamed neighbour said the Joneses had a foster child whom they claimed was arrested two weeks ago over an unrelated incident.

The homemade bomb shot flames through a packed train carriage but apparently failed to detonate fully.

Pictures showed a white plastic bucket with wires coming out of the top in a supermarket shopping bag on the floor of a train carriage.

Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack.