DarkTimes - 24Hr Global News Blog

LONDON (AFP) — The Metropolitan Police were on Friday investigating a "frenzied, brutal and horrific attack" on two French students found stabbed to death in a charred London flat.

The bound and battered bodies of Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were found in the ground-floor flat in New Cross, southeast London, on Sunday when emergency services were called to the fire.

Bonomo had been stabbed nearly 200 times while Ferez suffered around 50 wounds in a prolonged ordeal, unidentified police sources quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency said.

The detective leading the investigation said they were dead before the fire took hold, adding that they were knifed in the head, neck, torso and back.

"The extent of the injuries are horrific," Detective Chief Inspector Mick Duthie said, adding that all the officers working on the case had been shocked by the extent of the violence.

"I have never seen injuries like this throughout my career. We are here today because I don't know why these boys were killed or who killed them."

Duthie appealed for witnesses to come forward to help explain "a frenzied, brutal and horrific attack."

As a forensic search of the scene continued, Duthie said the two students -- both biochemists from a university in Clermont-Ferrand, central France -- were on a short exchange programme at London's prestigious Imperial College.

They were due to return home at the end of July.

At the scene, police guarded the front door of the 1980s flat in a leafy cul-de-sac and tarpaulin covered a broken window. When the wind blew the tarpaulin up, it revealed several broken windows and a blackened sofa inside.

"A Spanish woman who lives in the block told me she had seen two men banging on their window" from the outside, said Christina Ramires, 32, a Brazilian journalist who lives on the same floor as the flat but had not been at home at the time of the attack.

"The Spanish woman said they were wearing hats... then she heard a very strong sound, a bomb."

Another resident in the road, Farzana Akbary, 27, from Afghanistan, said she had seen the force of the blast from the block of flats opposite.

"I just saw the fire as I was washing dishes in my kitchen. It blew out the windows of their flat," she told AFP.

Police said they were searching for a white man seen running away from the scene at the time of the explosion.

They also revealed that the flat had been burgled in the days leading up to the men's deaths, and a computer was stolen.

The university the men attended in Clermont-Ferrand, central France said they were "brilliant students." Bonomo, who was renting the flat where the attack took place, was head of the university's student union.

The deaths coincided with growing concern about knife crime and gang culture in London, which newly-elected Conservative mayor Boris Johnson and Metropolitan Police chief Ian Blair have vowed to tackle.

Three teenagers were set to appear at Highbury Corner Magistrates Court on Friday, charged with the murder of 16-year-old Ben Kinsella who was stabbed outside a London bar over the weekend.

Police and the Home Office say overall knife crime in London is falling. But 17 teenagers have been knifed to death so far this year -- already more than half the total number for the last 12 months.