If this report is true the bombmaker, or someone linked to him, may have studied in the US.

An Egyptian wanted in connection with the London terrorist bombings studied chemical engineering at North Carolina State University in the United States, the institution said on Thursday.

Magdy El-Nashar, who has links to the house in the English city of Leeds where the bombs were made, spent one semester at North Carolina’s chemical engineering department, said Mick Kulikowski, a university spokesperson.

Nashar, 33, was at the university in Raleigh from January to May 2000, Kulikowski said.

According to British media, Nashar’s rented house in Leeds was one of six raided by British police on Wednesday, and bomb-making equipment may have been found there.

Nashar had been an assistant professor at Leeds University but, according to the reports, left Britain just before last week’s attacks in the British capital, in which at least 53 people died and about 700 were injured