By Reuters

A coroner formally ruled on Friday that the 52 victims of the July 2005 London suicide bombings were unlawfully killed, but dented relatives' hopes for a full public inquiry.

Originally published by Reuters

Lady Justice Heather Hallett said the evidence presented to the 5-1/2 month inquest into their deaths "does not justify the conclusion that any failings of any organisation or individual caused or contributed to the deaths."

All medical and scientific evidence pointed to the conclusion that none of the 52 dead would have survived, even if emergency services had got to them more quickly, she added.

She said however she was making recommendations which "may save lives" in the future."

Many of the victims' families had called for a full public inquiry into the bombings to establish whether the police and domestic security service, MI5, could have stopped them.

The inquest at London's High Court heard how the victims had been killed during an "unimaginably dreadful wave of horror."

Four British Islamists -- Mohammad Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, Hasib Hussain, 18, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19, -- detonated bombs on three packed underground trains and a bus in the morning rush hour on July 7, 2005.

As well as killing themselves and the 52 others, they injured over 700 people.

The inquest -- which had to wait until all criminal trials of alleged associates of the bombers had ended -- were the first public examination of the blasts and the events leading up to them.

The verdicts on the worst peacetime attacks on British soil came in a week that the United States said it had killed Osama bin Laden and London police chief Paul Stephenson warned that another attack against Britain could come at any time.