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Explosions rocked London on Thursday, killing several people and wounding scores in what Prime Minister Tony Blair said was an apparent terror attack coinciding with a meeting of Group of Eight leaders in Scotland.
Witnesses
saw the top was ripped off a double-decker bus near Russell Square
close to King's Cross train terminal and the twisted wreckage of
another in Tavistock Square nearby.
Several underground subway stations also were hit.
"It is reasonably clear that there have been a series of terrorist
attacks in London," Blair told reporters at the summit. He said he
would return to London.
A doctor at Aldgate underground station in the east of the
financial centre of the city said at least 90 people were wounded
at that location alone.
London's police chief Ian Blair said there were indications of
explosives at one of the blast sites.
"We are aware that one of the sites certainly does contain
indications of explosives," he told Sky Television. "We are
concerned that this is a co-ordinated attack."
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
London has so far escaped the 2004 Madrid-style bombings blamed on
al Qaeda, and the blasts on Thursday left London residents in
shock.
People were seen streaming out of one underground station covered
with blood and soot. Passengers were evacuated from stations across
the capital, many in shock and with their clothes ripped to shreds,
witnesses said.
"We think there are about six explosions. There are many
casualties," Ian Blair said.
The city's streets were gridlocked and financial markets plummeted
as it became increasingly apparent that the blasts were an attack,
and not a power surge on the underground train system as had been
reported.
The exact cause of the incidents, which occurred one day after
London was awarded the 2012 Olympics, was unknown.
Police confirmed that two people were killed in an explosion at
London's Aldgate East underground station. There were fears of more
fatalities in the damaged buses.
Security experts said the apparent attacks bore all the hallmarks
of the al Qaeda network.
"If what are looking at is a simultaneous bombing, and it does look
like that, it would very certainly fit the classic al Qaeda
methodology which centres precisely on that, multi-seated hits on
transport and infrastructural targets," said Dr. Shane Brighton,
intelligence expert at the Royal United Services Institute for
Defence.
