Families of the victims of the July 2005 London bombings may have had their phones hacked in search of stories by an investigator working for News of the World (NoW), it was reported on Wednesday as the phone-hacking scandal surrounding the newspaper deepened with Prime Minister David Cameron promising an independent inquiry.
One man, who lost his son in the 7/7 attacks, was reported as saying he was contacted by the police who told him that his phone records were found in the papers seized from the investigator's office.
The new claims, made in a Guardian report, came a day after the newspaper revealed that a detective hired by NoW illegally hacked into the phone of a missing teenaged girl in 2002. Milly Dowler, who vanished while on her way home from school, was later found murdered.
In another development, News International, Rupert Murdoch's media group which publishes NoW, admitted that the tabloid paid police for information between 2003-2007 when Mr. Cameron's former communications chief Andy Coulson was the paper's editor.
Mr. Coulson left Downing Street earlier this year over allegations of his role in the scandal.
Mr. Cameron faced embarrassment in the Commons when Labour leader Ed Miliband told him: “He's got to accept that he made a catastrophic error of judgement by bringing Andy Coulson into the heart of the Downing Street machine.”
New and damaging revelations appeared to be emerging “by the hour'', Labour Shadow Home Secretary Yvette Cooper noted during a debate which saw calls for the government to block Mr. Murdoch's bid for the takeover of the satellite broadcaster BSkyB.
Earlier, Mr. Cameron backed demands for an inquiry describing the NoW's newsgathering tactics as “absolutely disgusting''.
The News International , whose other titles include The Times and the Sun , has already paid millions of pounds in compensation to a number of celebrity victims of previous incidents of hacking by Now.
Its chief executive and a former NoW editor Rabekah Brooks is under pressure to quit.
