Eight people, including three doctors, have now been arrested in connection with the failed bomb attacks in London and Glasgow, authorities said Monday.

British police officers patrol Waterloo train station in an attempt to beef up security in central London on Monday.
(Lefteris Pitarakis/Associated Press)

The latest arrest was announced by British police Monday night. Police would not give details, but the Australian government said a 27-year-old man was detained at the airport in Brisbane while trying to leave the country.

Australia's Attorney General Philip Ruddock said the suspect was a doctor at the Queensland state hospital, but is not an Australian citizen.

British police have confirmed that two suspects arrested on Saturday were doctors — a Palestinian neurologist and an Iraqi diabetes specialist, who both worked at British hospitals.

The eight arrests come after two Mercedes containing gasoline and nails were found parked outside a popular nightclub and on a nearby street on Friday night, just metres from Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus. The bombs did not detonate.

On Saturday afternoon, a burning sport utility vehicle filled with gas canisters crashed into the front doors of the main terminal building at Glasgow airport. A bystander was injured in the blast.

The driver, who has been arrested, was being treated Monday for serious burns at Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley near the airport, where he is being guarded by heavily armed police officers.

In addition to the driver, four more people were arrested Saturday, while another two were detained Sunday. All were stopped in various locations in the United Kingdom.

The Iraqi doctor, who worked at the Glasgow-area hospital where the driver is being treated, was arrested at the airport moments after the Saturday afternoon attack. He is being held at a high-security police station in Glasgow.

He is identified as Bilal Abdulla, and according to the British General Medical Council's register, a man named Bilal Talal Abdul Samad Abdulla was registered in 2004 and trained in Baghdad.

Staff at his hospital said he was a diabetes specialist.

'He's not a fanatic'

The second doctor, Mohammed Jamil Abdelqader Asha, was arrested Saturday on a highway in central England, a police official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. An official in Jordan said the doctor is of Palestinian descent and carries a Jordanian passport.

Asha worked at the North Staffordshire Hospital, near the Midlands town of Newcastle-under-Lyme, according to a fellow doctor, Salil Vengalil. Vengalil said Asha worked in the neurology department.

In Jordan, Asha's brother Ahmed told the Associated Press he had heard the media reports, and said his 26-year-old sibling "is not a Muslim extremist and he's not a fanatic."

"It's nonsense because he has no terror connections," he said.

Reports of other doctors arrested

Britain's Independent newspaper, and the Muslim News newspaper, were reporting Monday that another man arrested Saturday, in Liverpool, was a 26-year-old doctor from India who worked at Halton Hospital in Cheshire, in northern England. Police would not confirm this report.

Meanwhile, Britain's Sky Television was reporting Monday that the two men arrested Sunday at residences attached to Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley were trainee physicians.

Police have not confirmed this report either.

A director at Chatham House, an independent foreign policy think-tank based in London, said this case should challenge stereotypes about terrorist attacks.

"This case could be the final proof that an idea those involved in these types of attacks are all young, angry and poorly educated is a mistake," Paul Cornish said Monday.

A 'fast-moving investigation'

During question period Monday, Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said police searched the locations in response to the failed car bombings as part of a "fast-moving investigation."

"Let us be clear: terrorists are criminals whose victims come from all walks of life, communities and religious backgrounds," she told the House of Commons. "Terrorists attack the values that are shared by all law-abiding citizens.

"It is through our unity that the terrorists will eventually be defeated."

British officials have said they are hunting for an al-Qaeda-linked network behind the attempted attacks. None of those arrested is British-born.  

"[It's] clear that we are dealing, in general terms, with people who are associated with al-Qaeda," Prime Minister Gordon Brown told the BBC on Sunday.

He said people still needed to be "constantly vigilant" against what was a "long-term and sustained threat."

Britain on high alert

As police carried out their investigative work on Monday and the weekend, searching at least 19 locations for suspects and clues, other officers flooded Britain's airports, train stations, subways and city streets as a show of force aimed at deterring any further attacks.

Protective concrete blocks were set up in front of the gates at the Wimbledon tennis tournament.

Police and bomb experts detonated a car outside a Glasgow hospital on Monday, but no explosives were found during the precautionary controlled explosion, police said.

One government official said police are working on a theory that the same people who drove the cars filled with explosives into London on Friday night drove the blazing sport utility vehicle into the Glasgow airport.

With files from the Associated Press