LONDON (AP) – In a city reeling from its worst attack since World War II, the messages fluttering in a light breeze Monday atop a mound of flowers for the victims mirrored the sorrow and anger sweeping London.

“God bless London,” said a card nestled among the bouquets laid outside the King’s Cross Underground station, near the site of the worst of last week’s four terrorist strikes.

“May the perpetrators rot in hell,” read another.

Police raised the death toll to 52 as workers continued the gruesome task of combing twisted wreckage for more bodies. Authorities identified the first of the victims – a 53-year-old married mother of two.

In a somber address to the House of Commons, his first since the bombings, Prime Minister Tony Blair said it seemed probable that Islamic extremists were responsible and promised a “vigorous and intense” manhunt to bring the attackers to justice.

No specific intelligence could have prevented the strikes, he said.

“Our country will not be defeated by such terror,” he told lawmakers, denouncing the attacks as a “murderous carnage of the innocent.”

“We will pursue those responsible wherever they are and will not rest until they are identified and … brought to justice,” he said.

President Bush expressed solidarity with Britain on Monday, saying, “America will not retreat in the face of terrorists and murderers.”

The search for bodies was playing out in mangled subway cars marooned in a hot, dusty, rat-infested tunnel. The body count, authorities warned, likely would climb higher.

“That will rise,” Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Ian Blair said outside the King’s Cross station near the bloodiest of the four bombings – an explosion that killed at least 21 people on one of the Underground’s deepest lines.

“They still have to get underneath the carriages, and it is possible they will find more” bodies, he said.

Two other subway trains and a double-decker bus also were destroyed in the attacks, which wounded 700 people. Fifty-six remained hospitalized Monday, many in critical condition, officials said.

Police announced they had identified the first of the victims – Susan Levy, 53, of Hertfordshire outside London. Forensics experts have warned it could take days or weeks to put names to the bodies, many of which were blown apart and would have to be identified through dental records or DNA analysis.

“We are all devastated by our loss,” said her husband, Harry, a London taxi driver.

London’s University College initially said one of its cleaning service employees, whom it identified as Gladys Wundowa, 51, also was among the dead. But later, the college said Wundowa remained missing.

Millions of commuters ventured back onto subways and buses, intent on resuming their routines. “We won’t let a small group of terrorists change the way we live,” said a defiant Mayor Ken Livingstone.

Public transit officials said the number of passengers using London’s bus and subway network, which handles 3 million people on a typical day, was back to normal Monday.

But commuters were clearly jittery, understandably rattled by numerous security alerts and evacuations triggered by travelers temporarily abandoning their bags, and some played it safe by riding taxis to work. Among them was Ted Wright, who took a cab to “hopefully put my wife’s mind at rest.”

London newspapers identified a possible suspect as Mustafa Setmarian Nasar – a Syrian suspected of being al-Qaida’s operations chief in Europe and the alleged mastermind of last year’s Madrid railway bombings. U.S. officials said both the United States and Britain were trying to locate Nasar.

Security officials in Poland, meanwhile, said Monday they searched the home of a British citizen of Pakistani origin in the eastern Polish city of Lublin in connection with the bombings. Poland’s Internal Security Agency did not release the man’s name and said he was not taken into custody.

A man with dual British-Moroccan nationality also mentioned as a possible suspect told The Guardian newspaper he had nothing to do with the blasts.

“Over 30 years I have lived in Britain, I have never been involved in violence or crime,” said Mohamed al-Guerbouzi, who was convicted in absentia in Morocco in 2003 and sentenced to 20 years in prison in connection with the Casablanca terrorist bombings.

Britain’s Islamic leaders, alarmed at reports of arson and other violence targeting mosques, called for calm Monday in a statement urging people not to use the aftermath of the bombings “as a morbid opportunity to attack and undermine British Muslims.”

The mayor and other officials laid flowers beneath a tree in Victoria Embankment Gardens, a small park wedged between the River Thames and London’s busy theater district, and said they planned to erect a permanent memorial there.

As the families of people who haven’t been heard from since the bombings lost hopes of finding them alive, passers-by continued placing bouquets, cards of sympathy, teddy bears and balloons outside the targeted Underground stations.

With the attackers at large, authorities warned anew of the danger of more strikes.

Underscoring how tense London remained, police briefly closed several streets where most government offices are located – including Parliament, the Foreign Office, and 10 Downing St., where Blair lives and works – after a suspicious package was found, but it contained no explosives. Later, police evacuated the King’s Cross subway station for a time and shut the Waterloo bridge over the Thames; both were false alarms.

“We can’t possibly assume that what happened on Thursday was the last of these events,” said James Hart, the police official in charge of London’s financial district. “There is absolutely no doubt that there are people out there who wish us harm, and we have to be vigilant.”

AP-ES-07-11-05 2122EDT

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