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| Britain |
| Police struggle to reach bodies after London blasts |
| 2005-07-08 |
| EFL. LONDON (Reuters) - Police scrambled through dangerous rail tunnels deep underground on Friday to hunt for clues and retrieve bodies after suspected al Qaeda bombers killed more than 50 people in London rush-hour blasts. A day after four bombs tore through three underground trains and a red double-decker bus, commuters headed to work again on London's battered transport network, some fearful, some defiant, undeterred by the knowledge it might happen again. "My granddad called me last night and told me I had to go to work today," said Sally Higson, 36. "He's 89. He lived through the war and said it was important to carry on as normal." The attacks -- which ministers said bore the hallmarks of the Islamic militant al Qaeda network -- were London's deadliest in peacetime and disrupted a summit of the Group of Eight (G8) industrialized countries in Gleneagles, Scotland. London police chief Ian Blair said more than 50 people were killed in the blasts and 700 wounded. He said the final death toll was not yet known. Police had yet to reach one of the bombed underground carriages in central London as the surrounding tunnel was unsafe. Blair said no survivors were trapped underground and the task now was to retrieve bodies. Andy Trotter of the British Transport Police said the number of bodies still trapped was not known, but one police source said it could be more than 10. "This was a crowded tube train at rush hour in central London with several hundred people on board," Trotter said. Andy Hayman, of the London police specialist operations branch, spoke of the "extreme circumstances" under which rescue services were working, saying they faced the hazards of tunnel collapse, vermin and "dangerous substances" in the air."Just imagine an explosion that far into a tunnel," he said. "I think we can all respect the sort of things our people are actually confronting." A maintenance worker, who did not want to be identified, said he had reached the site early on Friday and described "awful" scenes, with several bodies in the carriage."We got up to the carriage, although it was very dark there at the time," he told Reuters. "The smell was awful." Hayman said the bombs were believed to have contained up to 10 lbs (4.5 kg) of explosives and could have been carried onto the trains and bus in backpacks. Police said they had no specific intelligence warning of the attacks. Home Secretary Charles Clarke said the blasts "came completely out of the blue." The New York Times said timing devices rather than suicide bombers set off the explosions and Blair stressed there was nothing so far to suggest suicide attacks. An Internet statement from another group, calling itself the "Organization of al Qaeda - Jihad in the Arabian Peninsula" praised the attacks and said Rome would be targeted next. |
| Posted by:tu3031 |