A series of near simultaneous explosions have taken place across Central London just north of the Thames river. The London Ambulance service spokeman Paul Woodrow confirms that, as of 12:30 PM there was a rescue operation underway under Kings Cross station where they report a tube train stuck between sites. The London Underground carries over 3 million passengers per day. The Royal London Hospital Chief Executive Paul White said they have had at least three london buses full of people delivering casualties to the hospital, which is London’s main trauma hospital with helicopters based at site, currently stacked waiting to land at the hospital because of the number of casualties being moved. With the road, underground and bus transport services stopped for the day, large scale transportation of casualties is most efficient by bus trips. An eyewitness as broadcast on BBC 5 Live News reported that it took at least 20 minutes for emergency services to arrive at the Russel Square tube station. The initial throngs of people emerging from the station were walking wounded and those who’d suffered smoke inhalation, but later those casualties being taken out were being carried in blankets by London Underground staff because the extent of their burns and loss of limbs made them unable to escape themselves.
Reports indicate that an underground train has exploded outside Kings Cross station, and at least one bus has suffered an explosion on the top level outside Tavistock Square, reported by police sources to be caused by a suicide bomber. The explosion took place directly outside the headquarters of the British Medical Association where Dr Lawrence Buckman confirmed that ten people had died and there were nine serious injuries. He said there was very little of the bus left and that those injured were not necessarily inside the bus when the explosion went off, but were on the other side of the road. Dr Buckman was present in meetings at the BMA’s headquarters, out of which many doctors rushed just seconds after the explosion took place. The proximity of the attack to the headquarters of the UK doctors organisation meant that several lives were saved. A total of seven explosions [now shown to have been incorrect as of 1:30 PM - see below for explanation] have been confirmed by the Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair. Originally thought to be caused by an electrical fault, the explosions which began at 8:50 AM in London and may have only stopped around 10:15, were cautiously confirmed by the Prime Minister Tony Blair as terrorist actions when he spoke at a press conference from the G8 summit in Scotland.
From FT.com: Passengers spoke of hearing a “huge thud’’ at Edgware Road station and travellers emerged from tunnels covered in blood and soot and with torn clothing. An eyewitness at Aldgate, where the two fatalities were reported, saw smoke rising from the station and commuters with facial injuries and burns leaving the scene as the area was evacuated. Police officers at the scene said there was evidence of an explosive device 200 metres down the track from the station.
According to a spokesman at Edgware station, there have been a number of fatalities at the site which was chaotic to start with but extrememly well managed after the initial explosion which took place on an underground train.
All mobile phone networks were down, either by design or disruption, just after the start of the problems at around 9:30-10:00 AM, which hightened the fear of some people affected. Security experts said that this action may have been deliberately taken to prevent the remote detonation of any explosive devices as took place in the Madrid train bombings.
Prime Minister Tony Blair announced he would be leaving the G8 Summit at Gleneagles in order to attend meetings concerning the attacks, with an intention to return to the summit later in the day: “Our commitment is greater than their determination to cause chaos and disruption”
Liberal Democrat MP Simon Hughes, near Kings Cross, told Five Live: “My only thought in the midst of all this confusion is that after the celebration of yesterday (due to winning the 2012 Olympics) for people to be evil enough – if it is the intentional causing of death and injury – and think that they can justify this in any circumstances is completely unacceptable.”
The Muslim Council of Britain said just after 12:40 PM: The Muslim Council of Britain utterly condemns the perpetrators of what appears to be a series of co-ordinated attacks in London this morning that have led to a large number of casualties. While news unfolds, MCB urges for calm.
As of around 1:30 PM it appears there were four attacks rather than seven. The confusion resulted from the many thousands of people sweeping out of the underground system from many different directions. As those in the trains escaped, they fled via various routes and along different lines, meaning they emerged at differing locations throughout the city’s Tube network. The locations of confirmed attacks are ::
- Between Aldgate East and Liverpool Street Underground stations
- Between Russell Square and King’s Cross Underground stations
- At or near Edgware Road Underground station
- On bus at Tavistock Square
The AP is reporting, as the AFP was earlier today, that Israeli Finance Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was warned minutes before the London attacks took place. He was due to attend meetings at a hotel just above one of the bombing locations and instead stayed in his hotel room. The news comes from sources at the Israeli Embassy.
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These despicable acts – whoever perpetrated them and for whatever possible imagined purpose – must be condemned and lamented by people of good will everywhere. There is no conceivable rational calculation in which the suffering of innocent people in different quarters if the globe can be balanced or opposed to one another. Each new attack only adds to the sum total of evil in the world.
All that aside, one can’t help wryly remarking on one particular sentence in the report above (whether to caution against the many hazards of passive literary constructions or to marvel at the intricate possibilities of so-called Freudian slips): “… the explosions … have been cautiously confirmed to be the result of terrorism by the Prime Minister …”
Now to mark down yet another horrific day in the sorry history of the human race…
Yes, a terrible awful day.
You’ll forgive me, but I changed my poor phrasing earlier which may have given a false impression as to my attribution of responsibility. I couldn’t leave it like that because I know that, though not directly offended by the remark, I could imagine others being so. On a day when it feels criminal to smile let alone joke, I don’t want to make light. I know there will have been many people for whom more than one tear will have been shed while hearing the first-hand accounts of terror, fright, death, destruction and pain flood in; I was one of them. Those inside Underground trains had to run past the burning carriages of trains that’d been attacked; had to walk past and save themselves in a hope that those victims trapped inside could free themselves. I can’t imagine anything worse or more haunting than knowing that it could have been you, had you just picked a different carriage, knowing that you could have done more and knowing that you may have been able to save a life but didn’t.
On the afternoon of September 11th I’d had an amazing day of art classes and it was a beautiful day in England. It was sunny and there were flowers open and I walked home across green fields that made me as happy as could be. And then when I got home at 5pm that evening I found out, from my sisters crouched around our TV set, that people in New York had been dying for the last three hours. Dying not because of illness or old age or accidents, all of which are desperately sad, but dying because of hatred and evil thoughts. I don’t chide people for believing there are things wrong with our world, for thinking the West has done something wrong in taking control of the resources of the world and ruling over it as though we deserve it more than others. We are wrong and should change, but change is slow and painful and people are apathetic. But I wasn’t think about on September 11th, I was simply thinking that I didn’t deserve to have fun, to have a really great time when there as all this pain, death and destruction.
For months afterward I was plagued by a kind of guilt for that day, and it was that feeling that made me believe that we should honour our war dead and the contributions of all wars because I came to realise how truely awful fighting is and how noone wants to do it. No soldier wants to join an army to fight because fighting is awful. I’ve strongly considered being a soldier but I don’t know, somehow I’ve never persued it.
We can be so much better, we can do so much more, we can care so much more, we just have to be aware.
I had to change the words because I offended myself. Friends of mine had friends who died today, and it’s never funny to joke about death. I will go to sleep tonight glad the day is over, praying that tomorrow is a better one and that all of todays victims of false ideologies rest in peace.
I have no doubt anyone who read the original sentence could ever have believed it to be anything other than a slightly infelicitous awkwardness in phrasing. The true intended meaning of the whole was readily apparent. But it is much improved, now, by the editing.
Truly, there isn’t much we can do other than reconfirm our resolve to help build a world where desperate fanaticisms will become impossible, because legitimate grievances will always be justly and expeditiously recognized and arbitrated.
Let a man leave anger, let him forsake pride, let him overcome all bondage! No sufferings befall the man who is not attached to name and form, and who calls nothing his own.
He who holds back rising anger like a rolling chariot, him I call a real driver; other people are but holding the reins.
Let a man overcome anger by love, let him overcome evil by good; let him overcome the greedy by liberality, the liar by truth!
Speak the truth, do not yield to anger; give, if thou art asked for little; by these three steps thou wilt go near the gods.
The Dhammapada
Patrick – this was a really good post – I didn’t see the original – but I’m sure it would not have been offensive. See you soon. x