Killers' families tell of their grief and horror at 'evil act'

The wife of Germaine Lindsay, 19, from Aylesbury, said she was horrified at her husband's involvement in the King's Cross blast. Samantha Lewthwaite, 22, a white British Muslim convert, said Lindsay had been a "loving family man" until recently when he started making trips to Luton.

She said: "In four months he changed from a lovely family man to someone I hardly recognised. He was regularly travelling to Luton, sometimes two to three times a week, to meet new friends ... the truth is dawning that he somehow got mixed up in these bombings. My world has fallen apart and I'm horrified."

Ms Lewthwaite, who is eight months pregnant with the couple's second child - they have a 15-month old son, Abdullah - condemned her husband's actions and said her thoughts were with the families who had lost loved ones.

The mother of Shahzad Tanweer, 22, from Leeds, who detonated the Aldgate bomb, was said to be gravely ill last night. A family friend said she had been too ill to eat or talk since hearing of her son's involvement, and her condition was made worse by diabetes.

The family of the Edgware Road bomber, Mohammed Sidique Khan, offered their "deepest and heartfelt sympathies" to the victims and called the attack an "evil and horrific act", in a statement released through West Yorkshire Police. "We are devastated our son may have been brainwashed into carrying out an atrocity since we know him as a kind and caring member of our family."

A former girlfriend of the youngest bomber, Hasib Hussain, 18, from Holbeck, Leeds, said he went to Pakistan and came back a different person. "He became more extreme with his beliefs." The white British girl, who did not want to be named, met him when she was 12 and he was 15.