SCOTLAND YARD released eight pictures yesterday of the man detectives believe is the prime suspect for the Brixton nail bomb that injured 39 people.

IT IS hard to see hope in the shape of a bent nail embedded in the skull of a toddler - the shocking X-ray picture used by the police in a poster appealing for information about the Brixton nail bomb. Hard, but possible. The point about the bombs in Brixton and Brick Lane, symbolic locations of multi-ethnic London, is that they could have been the work of a single disturbed individual. Even if they were planned by a group, whether it tries to dignify itself with a name like Combat 18 or the White Wolves, it would hardly have more significance than the Trenchcoat Mafia of Columbine High.

THE EXTREME right in Britain, unlike some counterparts in Europe, had been known for random racial attacks rather than organised terrorism. On the face of it, the London bombs, at Brick Lane and Brixton, appear to change that.

5.45pm: A man notices a black Reebok sports bag containing what appears to be an explosive device at the junction of Hanbury Street and Brick Lane, just yards from the London Jamme Masjid mosque. He carries the bag to a police station. Finding it shut he returns to his car, a Ford Sierra, puts the bomb in the boot and goes to call the police.

NEO-NAZI bombers are likely to strike at black, Asian and Jewish communities across Britain, police warned yesterday as investigations continued into Saturday's bomb attack in Brick Lane, east London.

DETECTIVES INVESTIGATING the nail bomb attack which injured 39 people in a market in Brixton, south London, staged a reconstruction last night of the events leading up to the blast.

A CAR BOMB exploded in Brick Lane, the heart of London's Bangladeshi community, last night. The attack, exactly a week after a nail bomb injured 39 people in Brixton, south London, raised fears of a sustained campaign of violence by racists.

"It looked like a scene from a war zone. I saw a car ablaze with pieces of shrapnel and debris all over the place. Several people had blood from glass injuries on their face. Some people were blown off their feet by the shock of the explosion. It created terrible confusion," Tower Hamlets councillor Raja Miah

Reaction to the nail bomb which exploded in a busy market street at the weekend

MI5 AND the Metropolitan Police Racial and Violent Crimes Taskforce are investigating the Brixton nail bombing as Scotland Yard becomes increasingly convinced that the bomber was racially motivated.

THE 23-MONTH-OLD boy who had a nail removed from his head after the Brixton bomb blast has left Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, a spokeswoman said.

EFFORTS TO trace those responsible for Saturday's bomb in Brixton, south London, have been hampered because crucial closed-circuit television film was obscured by a broken-down bus.

TENSION OVER the Brixton nail bomb was heightened yesterday after an anonymous caller purporting to be a member of the far-right group Combat 18 claimed responsibility for the attack.

BRITAIN'S WORST nail-bomb atrocity was the IRA attack on the Household Cavalry in London's Hyde Park, which left four soldiers and seven horses dead. The bomb, containing 25lb (11kg) of gelignite surrounded by four- and six-inch nails and hidden in a car, was detonated by remote control on 20 July 1982.