LONDON: Britain's security services could not have prevented the 2005 London suicide attacks because they lacked the resources to investigate the plot's ringleader properly, a report by senior parliamentarians said yesterday.

Indeed the domestic spy agency MI5 could only properly track about 6 percent of those suspected of involvement in terrorism a year before the bombings, the Intelligence and Security Committee (ISC) said.

In a report containing unprecedented detail about the work of MI5, the committee said the head of the service had admitted that even now, with greater resources, they could only "hit the crocodiles nearest the boat".