LONDON, 9 July 2005 — The day after London experienced its worst-ever terrorist onslaught, the reality of the dramatic events was slowly starting to sink in. Acts of heroism, stories of extraordinary bravery and spontaneous generosity are emerging, reflecting a London community rallying together instead of panicking in the light of a terrorist outrage.
Commuters cautiously returned to the subways, Muslims wary of a backlash held Friday prayers, and the fabled entertainment districts that canceled shows resumed performances.
But much of the city remained eerily quiet. Bombed subway stations were shrouded in security curtains and refrigerated trucks waited outside to cart away bodies still trapped in the city’s deep tunnels.
Police said the bodies of 49 people had been recovered but warned the death toll would rise.
An estimated 22 people were in critical condition and many were reported missing, although emergency management officials would not give specific numbers.
The mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, back yesterday morning from Singapore where he was part of the London 2012 Olympic bid team, and Sir Ian Blair, Metropolitan Police commissioner, praised the resolve of Londoners and the bravery of the emergency services.
The last seven days, stressed Livingstone, have moved from triumph to tragedy — the triumph of the Live 8 “Make Poverty History” concert in Hyde Park and the successful London 2012 bid in Singapore, to the tragedy of the terrorist atrocities in London.
“There are eight million people in London, where some 300 languages are spoken. This city typifies the future of the human race. This was not an attack against the powerful and the famous, but against ordinary working people. This was a criminal attempt at mass murder,” he retorted.
There was the striking image of a police sergeant, still unidentified, who commandeered a double-decker bus to ferry the walking wounded from the Liverpool Street/Aldgate blast to the Royal London Hospital, one of the top trauma facilities in Europe.
Another officer, despite suffering injuries himself in the bus blast, insisted on helping the wounded staying from morning till midnight, and assisting in life-saving operations which were carried out in the building of the British Medical Association (BMA), outside which the bomb on the red bus exploded. General Practitioner Peter Holden together with 14 other doctors who happened to be at an event at the BMA, set up a makeshift hospital to treat the casualties, at first working without equipment.
Then there was the ex-fireman Paul Dadge who in the Edgware Road incident helped a woman, simply called Davina — with severe facial burns and lacerations with a gel pack face mask — an abiding image which has been flashed all over the front pages and TV screens worldwide.
Opposite the Edgware Road underground where the third blast occurred, Marks & Spencer, the famous London department store shut its doors for the day, but staff provided free food and drinks to the emergency services and others affected by the blast.
As the death toll rose to over 50, with 13 now confirmed dead in the attack on the very symbol of London, the No. 30 red bus, the task ahead, in the words of Sir Ian Blair, is “the implacable resolve to track down those people responsible for this atrocity. This is a critical situation for the City of London and London as a whole. It is business as usual. The tube trains have been running as far as they can, and the buses have been operating normally.”
The prime suspect according to local reports is Mohammed Al-Garbuzi, a Moroccan asylum seeker who has lived in Britain for the last 16 years and who is purportedly the leader of an alleged terrorist cell called the Group of Islamic Combatants of Morocco.
Al-Garbuzi has vanished from his North London home after police in Spain reportedly found evidence linking him to a man who is believed to have played a key role in the terrorist attacks in Madrid last year. Al-Garbuzi has already been sentenced to 20 years in absentia by the Moroccan authorities for his role in the bombings in Casablanca in May 2003.
The fallout from the tragedy that has thus far emerged is indeed harrowing. Police confirmed that bodies of those killed in the King’s Cross attack are still lying on the track. Access to the tunnel from both the Russell Square and King’s Cross ends of the Piccadilly line is difficult given the fact that the line is the deepest in the London Underground system. The sheer carnage and wreckage is also hampering access.
Anti-terrorist squad forensic experts have confirmed that the bombs were very sophisticated with high explosives packed in a small bag to make their carriage easy and inconspicuous. Officers of the squad together with colleagues from Special Branch, MI5 and MI6 have launched Britain’s biggest ever police hunt for the bombers. Sir Ian refused to confirm whether the bomb on the bus was detonated by the UK’s first suicide bomber or whether it went off in transit, perhaps destined for another underground target.
Frantic families and friends are also desperately trying to find missing loved ones believed to have traveled on the fateful routes on their way to work.
Police confirmed casualties from Sierra Leone, Australia and Portugal. Foreign embassies are frantically trying to account for their nationals.
Malaysia, for instance, has 20,000 students studying in Britain. With emergency lines congested, the sheer waiting has fueled the anguish of those relatives and friends simply trying to establish whether their beloved ones are safe or not.
