Tony Blair today said he intended to tighten the Government's controversial anti-terror laws after the London bombings which claimed 52 lives.

Mr Blair also said measures were in hand to fast-track the deportation of radical priests, to prevent them from spreading what he described as their "evil and extreme ideology", springing from a "perverted and poisonous misinterpretation of Islam".

As the police investigation continued in Leeds, Luton and London, Mr Blair told a hushed Commons that police and security services had done 'magnificent work' in the aftermath of the July 7 bombings.

Speaking at Prime Minister's Questions, he called for calm after the shock of finding that the bombings had been carried out by young British men. He emphasised that the terrorists represented an extreme minority of the Muslim community, and condemned the opportunistic race attacks which have come in their wake.

"There will be a sense of profound shock and anxiety in country at what has happened and also a need and a willingess to act," he told an unusually sombre House.

His words were particularly aimed at the shell-shocked suburban communities around Leeds, which were today waking up to the realisation that the four suicide bombers had grown up among their red-brick terraces.

Hundreds of residents have spent a night away from their homes in the Beeston and Burley areas surrounding yesterday's dramatic police raids, and today the West Yorkshire chief constable Colin Cramphorn was unable to assure them they would be home by tonight.

Mr Blair said: "This is a small group of extremists. It is not one that can be ignored because of the danger, but neither should it define Muslims in Britain who are overwhelmingly law-abiding, decent members of our society and we condemn attacks against them."

Police revealed last night that the London bombs were the work of four young British men of Pakistani origin, who planned their own deaths in the blasts. Three of the men lived in the city and the immediate fear is that members of a terrorist cell linked to the city are planning further strikes. The mastermind behind the attacks and the bombmaker are both still thought to be at large.

The man who planted the bomb at Edgware Road was named as Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, the married father of an eight-month-old baby, who is believed to have come from the Leeds area.

Two other terrorists were Hasib Hussain, 19, who bombed the bus in Tavistock Square, of Colenso Mount, Leeds, and Shehzad Tanweer, 22, the Aldgate bomber, who lived at Colwyn Road, Leeds.

Police believe they know the identity of the fourth, whose remains are believed to be in the bombed Tube train carriage on the Piccadilly Line. It is thought that he too comes from the Leeds area.

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