London terror bombings kill 37, wound 700 (Agencies) Updated: 2005-07-08 07:21
The first blast caught a subway train between Moorgate and Liverpool Street
stations, on the eastern fringe of London's financial district. Seven died,
police said. Moorgate is named for one of the gates in the city walls of London,
of which few traces remain. Some people caught in the blast emerged from the
Aldgate Station, near Jack the Ripper's old haunts in Whitechapel.
A journalist talks
on his mobile phone in front of the G8 nation flags flying at half-mast in
Gleneagles, site of the annual G8 conference, July 7, 2005. Four blasts
tore through packed underground trains and a bus during London's rush hour
on Thursday, killing 37 people and disrupting the summit of world leaders
in the deadliest-ever peacetime attack on the capital.
[Reuters] | The second bombing came five minutes later, on a second train deep
underground between the King's Cross and Russell Square stations. Police said 21
died. King's Cross station, in one of the seediest parts of London, is the film
setting for Platform 9 3/4 in the Harry Potter films. Russell Square station
serves Bloomsbury, the early 20th-century literary hotbed where Virginia Woolf
and luminaries lived. The British Museum is a short walk away.
At 9:17 a.m., there was an explosion involving two or perhaps three trains
around Edgware Road station. Five people were killed, police said. Edgware Road
is the heart of a thriving Arab community, and convenient to Hyde Park, scene of
last weekend's Live 8 concert.
The bus explosion took place near Russell Square, an area of many modestly
priced hotels popular with tourists and close to the British Museum. Also nearby
is the home where Charles Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839.
The explosions shut down a subway and bus system which handles 8.4 million
passenger journeys per day, though buses started running again for the evening
rush hour.
Stocks sank in Europe and on Wall Street, and the British
pound fell to a 19-month low against the U.S. dollar. London's FTSE 100 index
fell about 2 percent, or 102.40 points, gaining back half its earlier losses.
Germany's DAX fell 1.8 percent and the CAC 40 in Paris was down 1.7 percent.
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