Date Posted: Thursday, July 21, 2005

London was again hit with a series of bomb blasts, but unlike like those two weeks prior, there were no reported fatalities.

LONDON, Jul 21 (MASNET & News Agencies) - A string of blasts on the London Underground and a bus sent screaming passengers fleeing in panic and wounded at least one person, exactly two weeks after the deadliest terror attack on Britain.

Frightened travelers rushed out of London Underground subway stations after three small explosions were reported nearly simultaneously to the center, west and south of the city, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Within minutes, swathes of the city were sealed off by striped police tape and the air was filled of the sound of sirens as dozens of emergency vehicles rushed past.

Dozens of police and fire engines scrambled to the scenes, evacuating three Underground stations and cordoning off a wide area in eastern London around a double-decker bus in which the upper-floor windows were blown out.

Part of the underground train network was shut, but police reassured the public that the emergency was not as serious as 2 weeks ago, and Prime Minister Tony Blair called for calm, reports Reuters news agency.

"We know that we had four explosions or attempted explosions," London police chief Ian Blair told reporters on Thursday.

"At the moment the casualties appear to be very low in the explosions. The bombs appear to be smaller than on the last occasion," he said. "We don't know the implications for this yet and we are going to have to examine the scene very carefully," he told reporters.

"Clearly this is a very serious incident."

He said some devices appeared not to have gone off properly and only one person was injured, adding that he hoped London would now "get moving" again, reports Reuters.

Prime Minister Tony Blair appealed for calm and said it was too early to tell who was responsible, reports the Associated Press (AP).

"We can't minimize incidents such as this," he said at a joint news conference with the Australian prime minister at No. 10 Downing St. " We know why these things are done. They're done to scare people, to frighten them and make them worried."

"We've got to react calmly."

He held an emergency Cabinet meeting afterward but said no decisions "of a policy nature" were made, reports the AP.

The emergency, at around 1:00 p.m., coincided with a memorial service for victims of the attacks of July 7, the news agency reports.

Stations at Oval in southern London, Warren Street to the north and Shepherd's Bush to the west were evacuated. Police said initial investigations of Warren Street and Oval stations found no sign of chemical agents.

A witness at the Oval, Andrea, reported what appeared to be a would-be bomber alone in a carriage after a small blast:

"We all got off on the platform and the guy just ran and started running up the escalator... He left a bag on the train."

Four London Underground train lines were temporarily shut down.

The blasts hit a city traumatized by the July 7 attacks, in which 56 people were killed including four suspected al-Qaeda suicide bombers who blew up three London Underground trains and a double-decker bus.

Back on the streets, passengers who had fled the trains reported panic and chaos below ground.

"There was a smell like wires or tires, but it wasn't the train making the burning smell," said Sofiane Mohellebi, a Frenchwoman who was on one of the trains where an explosion occurred, at Warren Street station in the city center.

"People were screaming and panicking, but we managed to get off the train," she said.

Similar scenes took place around Shepherd's Bush station to the west and Oval, just south of the River Thames, near the famous cricket ground of the same name.

The chaos soon spread.

Hackney Road, a major thoroughfare in the eastern suburb of Bethnal Green, was sealed off after a bus driver heard a loud bang in his vehicle, followed by smoke.

"The first I knew of it there were people running about and running around in the street," said Paul Williamson, a 19-year-old bank worker who was around 20 yards from the bus when the blast happened.

Later still, a large radius around Saint Paul's Cathedral was blocked off by police, the cause this time being a suspicious package found inside the famous domed church, according to nearby workers who were evacuated.

All around the sealed off areas, Londoners gathered in small knots, peering past the tape as best they could and swapping information on what had happened, a few clutching portable radios for the latest updates.

In the first hours, the nature of the attacks was unclear, reports Reuters.

"The worst-case scenario...would be that these are devices that haven't triggered properly. Beyond that, it looks like it may be people messing around, copycat-type stuff," said Shane Brighton of the Royal United Services Institute in London.

Victoria Line passenger Ivan McCracken said he heard a traveler’s rucksack had exploded on the Tube outside Warren Street station.

"I was in a middle carriage and the train was not far short of Warren Street station when suddenly the door between my carriage and the next one burst open and dozens of people started rushing through. Some were falling, there was mass panic," he told Sky News.

"It was difficult to get the story from any of them what had happened but when I got to ground level there was an Italian young man comforting an Italian girl who told me he had seen what had happened.

"He said that a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack. The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage."

"I was in the carriage and we smelt smoke - it was like something was burning," said Fosiane Mohellavi, 35, who was evacuated from a train at Warren Street.

"Everyone was panicked and people were screaming. We had to pull the alarm. I am still shaking," she told Britain's Press Association news agency.

"We pulled into Warren Street and were evacuated. It was horrible," she said.

Another witness on the same line, Abena Adofo, 23, said people were running into her carriage. "I could just smell smoke and I saw lots of people panicking. I was just trying to be calm and get out. The smell of smoke was coming from the end of the carriage," she said.

Stagecoach, which owns the number 26 bus involved in the incident, said the driver heard a bang at around 1.30 pm.

The bus had left Waterloo and was in Shoreditch when the incident happened.

"The driver heard a bang which appeared to come from the upper deck. When he went upstairs to investigate, the windows on the upper deck were blown out.

"The bus is structurally intact and we don't have any reports of injuries," said a spokesman.

The incidents paralleled the July 7 blasts, which involved explosions at three Underground stations simultaneously starting at 8:51 a.m., followed quickly by a bomb going off on a bus. Those bombings, during the morning rush hour, also occurred in the center of London, hitting the Underground from various directions, reports the AP.