The ambulance service (reported here) reckons 23 dead at King’s Cross, nine at Edgware Road, seven at Aldgate, two at Russell Square – although the latter figure sounds too low given the appearance of the bus. 1000ish injuries. My guess based on the info so far and the general reporting of Such Things is that the death toll will double, but not go substantially above 100. Greatest sympathy to the dead, their families and friends.
"although the latter figure sounds too low given the appearance of the bus."
There’s a gruesome picture on The Times picture montage of the front of the BMA building, I can now attach an image to the phrase ‘looking like a slaughterhouse’….
I think it’s a hand lying in the road, but I could be wrong…
Fuck, that’s not nice.
my guess (and it is no more than that) is that the bus looks worse than it is. The roof of a double-decker is not a structural part; it’s a thin and quite delicate metal skin. When double-deckers crash into overhead obstacles, the roof is almost always scraped clean off. If you compare that bus to some of the horrible pictures of bus-bombings in Israel, it couldn’t have been that large a bomb. (I suspect that this also means it wasn’t a suicide bomber).
Not quite true (in that it is worse than it looks). I’ve emailed John an overhead shot of the bus which he’ll hopefully post. You’re right in that it’s blown the roof off, but it’s also blown through the back third of the floor. I suspect those in the rear two thirds of the upper deck were killed as were those in the lower third, not sure what that means in no/s though as depends how many were on it (probably packed), I suspect the reason for the "unknown killed" official statement is that they have a big bag of bits and they’re trying to work out how many humans they can make out of it. I’ll punt for 10-20 outright killed…
It’s really not good.
I was tempted to set up a casualties sweepstake earlier, but decided probably best not. That would be going beyond Daily Mail-mocking into territories of extreme wrongth.
The BBC are now reporting two killed on the bus, which (I think) was the number reported this morning before they switched to reporting an unknown number of deaths. Probably this should be read as "at least two killed", but then again, explosions can behave in peculiar ways.
Equally, the "big bag of bits" theory is fairly plausible :-(
If you look at this link, you can see that the kinetic energy of a bus going at 30mph can take the roof clean off. I don’t think Chris B is right that this bomb has totalled the back 2/3 of the bus; it looks to me like it has peeled the roof off and the roof has torn the back off. It looks to me like the chassis is more or less intact and I wouldn’t be surprised if that bus could be towed away. There are also some seats still attached on the top deck, and no material damage appears to have been done to neighbouring vehicles (and this would have been in nose-to-tail traffic). I don’t think that there is any big pile of dismembered bodies and that this was actually a very small bomb by the standards of Israeli bus bombs.
"I don’t think that there is any big pile of dismembered bodies"
Let’s hope not, but there remains the blood up the wall of the BMA building. Though there’s an awful lot of blood in one human, I suppose.
NB for those who can’t work these things out in their heads, the kinetic energy of a ~14 tonne bus going at 30mph (about 1MJ) is about the same as the energy released in the explosion of 250g of TNT.
Which is about a stick of dynamite, which I think is probably a decent estimate of what this bloke actually had. Newsnight’s Mark Urban had a very sensible point which is that this whole attack could have been stitched up by one guy in ten minutes (go to King’s Cross, put a package on a westbound Circle, one on an eastbound Circle, one on a Piccadilly, then nip out and get on a number 30). I’m not even sure it’s al-Quaeda.
I think, based on the timings of the trains, the smallness of the explosions and one theory put forward by the Police that the bus explosion was the work of a suicide bomber yet those killed in the bus explosion numbered only two, that this terror attack may well have been the work of only one person. A very clever plan to put a bag on trains heading east, west, and south from king’s cross and then board a bus and make it look like the whole of london is in thrall to a large group. But it’s a bit of a pathetic sharks suicide bombing, if only you, or you and one other person die. It seems to me that the guy(s) who did it have not a great deal of access to explosives, let alone people, yet do have a reference to the al qaeda famed method of synchronised attacks, and came up with a solution. Of course, London is not scared – London Pride and all that – but we sure were, and that’s the scary thing.
TZ/D2 – don’t think this works, although it’s an interesting plan:
* Aldgate East and Edgware Road are each about 10 mins from KX in the opposite direction, meaning he’d have had to put the bomb on one at 8:41 and one at 9:07. Not impossible, but when it’s only a cross-platform changeover then why not put them both on at 8:41? (especially since that would have significantly increased the number of people hit at Edgware Road)
* the Picc train was northbound from Russell Square => KX, not the other way round.
John –
1. Someone who was on that KX train has just been on 5Live. It was southbound. She got on at Turnpike Lane.
2. There’s another problem with the TZ/D2 theory: the bus was northbound. Coming towards Hackney and diverted southbound round Tavistock Sq because the Euston Rd was closed.
Hmmm I think the timings actually make more sense wrt the tube bombs. Six to ten minutes between trains on the Circle line is not all that unusual even at rush hour, it’s a really shit line. Bearing in mind that you would have to get onto the train to leave your bomb on it (even London commuters would probably have raised an eyebrow if someone simply chucked a bag onto the train and then hopped off), my theoretical "lone gunman"[1] would have got onto the train at 8:41, travelled one stop (2 mins, 8:43), waited for a train back (10min, 8:53), travelled one stop (8:55) and waited for the other train (9:05). My hypothesis for "why not just put both bombs on the westbound one?" is that he’s trying to play the Beau Geste game and create the illusion of a much greater force than he actually has. An AQ cell, one would have thought, would have been able to kill much more people at Edgeware Road anyway simply by making the bombs bigger.
The bus being northbound is more difficult to fit into my theory, unless the number 30 stops near Farringdon, in which case "Beau Geste" would have been able to get onto it after travelling one stop east with the Liverpool St bomb.
[1] Oh how ironic; I am a real conspiracy enthusiast and a member of several Kennedy-related mailing lists, now using the worst techniques of conspiracist bum-talking to promote the theory that this wasn’t caused by a shadowy international conspiracy.
… and it does, kindasorta. The 30 stops at the Angel when it’s running normally.
Does anyone know anything about the number of controlled explosions that were carried out, which if they were of genuine bombs would obviously do for the Beau Geste theory?
Number of dead is less than one weeks road fatalities. Sympathy to all those who have lost someone, it is no more tragic to lose someone in a bomb than a car crash.
D2: Actually, your tube thing can’t work. If the guy gets on at KX, there’s nowhere for him to get off before the Russell Sq bomb. It’s the next stop. He’d have died in the tunnel. FWIW, my theory is the bus guy chickened out and was getting out of there. There’s an eyewitness account today in the Indy from a guy who was sitting next to someone at the back/bottom that bus who was getting nervous and checking a rucksack incessantly. The eyewitness got off the stop before it exploded. He "didn’t know why".
D2: Angel’s after KX on the northbound 30. He could be the same guy that planted the Edgware Rd one though. He could have jumped off the Circle at Gt Portland St and got on the northbound 30.
Hmmmm … you have clearly never encountered a conspiracy nut before. It’s like sudoku for us trying to fit all the pieces together. My first thought was that this actually ties down Beau Geste’s location a bit more; he can achieve this one if he lived north of KX on the Piccadilly line and carried his bombs into KX on the Tube. So he gets on at (say) Caledonian Road with four bombs, rides the Picc to KX, gets off with three of them, goes to the Circle line platforms … and so on, see above.
But the timings don’t really work so well with that theory; the Russell Square bomb and the Edgeware Road one are too close together. Unless the Piccadilly line was having delays that day …
Jarndyce: are you sure it was northbound? I keep seeing references to it as "from Hackney to Marble Arch", though this could probably be just a convention for referring to bus routes.
D2: that’s your problem right there. The RSq underground bomb wasn’t first – Liverpool St was. They’d have had to be delayed 20ish mins after KX on the Picc for that to work, because it happened just a couple of hundred yards outside KX station. The person who was on that train on 5Live this morning didn’t mention any delay. To me, the bus bomb sounds like a fuck-up. Assuming logic, you wouldn’t set off a suicide bomb at the back of a bus, would you? Standing room by the stairwell is the only logical spot, if the bus is full, as it was. He was going home. Doesn’t mean he didn’t plant the Edgware Rd bomb, though. Was that train westbound?
Definitely northbound. It doesn’t go into Tavistock Place southbound. That’s my bus, I should know. It wouldn’t have gone there northbound either, but for the Euston Rd being blocked after the junction with Upper Woburn Place. Remember: the driver stopped to ask for directions from a pedestrian. Anyway, southbound it wouldn’t have got through. KX is already blocked off by now.
Hmmm, not looking so good for the Beau Geste theory at the moment. I think I can sort out the timings of the tube bombs because it is possible to "race" a Piccadilly line train to KX by changing to the Victoria line at Finsbury Park (home of the mosque) but the bus thing is much more difficult to sort out … hang on though, if the tube bombs are planted in order KX (left on the tube at Finsbury Park), Aldgate (left at Farringdon), Edgware Road (left at Great Portland St), then that puts my man on a northbound 30 at just about the right time, presumably getting off it at Euston to catch the Victoria line back home to Green Lanes. It’s pretty improbable though and relies on a lot of coincidence and playing around with timetables. I suspect you are right and there were multiple people involved, though I maintain that the lack of high explosive suggests that they weren’t serious AQ soldiers.
And thinking about it, the small size of the bombs provides weak support for the Beau Geste theory (or at least, the modified one which has maybe two attackers). The bombs were small because each bomber has to carry more than one of them.
1. Would the tube be busy enough to get away with leaving a bag at Finsbury Park undetected to Russell Square. Doubtful.
2. He’d need the Victoria line train to be waiting for him at Finsbury Park. Possible, but…
3. He’d need the eastbound Circle at KX to be waiting for him. Possible, but…
4. He’d be getting on the train initially with four bags. Nobody suspicious?
5. He didn’t get off at Euston. He went past it. Anyway, he’s not going home yet. He still has one bag to dump.
6. It still doesn’t explain why he was at the back of the bus.
The explosives point is strange though.
You only gain 1-2 mins taking the Vic instead of the Pic at Finsbury Park, and it’s 4 mins’ frantic rush from the Vic platforms at KX to the Met/Circle/H&S platforms. If services are running normally, your Pic bomb explodes just as you board the eastbound H&S train at KX.
So to reach yesterday’s timings, you need the Pic train to be delayed for 10 mins between Finsbury Park & KX. I’m fairly sure that didn’t happen.
NB my timings above only work if there’s a Vic train waiting at Finsbury Park *and* an eastbound H&S train waiting at KX. If not, then you need an even bigger delay on the Piccadilly for it to work.
However, the Vic & Pic southbound from Finsbury Park are definitely both sufficiently busy at 08:30ish on a weekday that a bag wouldn’t be noticed.
1. I dunno, but John B lives up near Finsbury Park so he’d know how busy it is.
2. Yes, it’s fluke after fluke isn’t it? If I were Robbie Coltrane I would be psychologically profiling him as a regular commuter on the route who knew how to play this "race" but it’s obviously straining the old credibility.
3. Another total fluke, straining the credibility rather more.
4. Hmmmm … but they would be small bags. Four carrier bags, each with (say) three hand grenades in them … this would just look like shopping, though a bit weird to be carrying them in at 0830.
5. Hmmmm … actually I’ve just realised while starting at londonbusroutes.com that he doesn’t need to go to Gt Portland Street. He can take the westbound circle from Farringdon one stop past KX (where he wouldn’t get off because he’d expect it to be closed) to Euston Square, leave bomb number 3 and then get onto the 30 with bomb number 4.
6. I think this one assumes that the bus bomb was a suicide bomb which I don’t think it was. For a suicide bomber, the stairwell would have been the place to stand, but if you’re just leaving a carrier bag with a bomb in it, the back of the bus is as good (as inconspicuous) as anywhere.
7. God I’ve just realised you said "that’s my bus". Bloody hell. That’s some sangfroid you’re showing to be discussing this rationally with me, bravo.
Another theory: assuming that the terrorists are keen to make a large media impact, it’s well worth their setting off a bomb above-ground, because the pictures will be more dramatic.
The small size of the bombs could also be evidence for the terrorists only having access to small quantities of explosives (or perhaps having lots but wanting to use it in numerous small attacks). I don’t think the size of the bombs would have been much constrained by a possible requirement that one person carry several — my impression is that 1kg bombs would have been quite sufficient for the amounts of damage that were done (imagine carrying four bags of sugar with you).
"My bus" meaning the bus I get, not the bus I was on. Though I would never have been on it northbound at the time of the morning, as I live in Hackney, so it’s not really sangfroid just analysis. Interestingly, Wikipedia are still saying it was a southbound bus. That’s almost certainly wrong, if not impossible. The bus was clearly heading south down Upper Woburn Place when it exploded. Therefore, assuming KX was closed (it was), there’s no way it can have been a southbound bus. A Marble Arch-bound bus would have been going north past the BMA building. As well as being a 30-rider, I used to be a cycle courier and know every inch of every street on yesterday’s TV.
6. I don’t think it was an intentional suicide bomb. My guess is the guy either chickened out or found he couldn’t get into tube stations because they were closed, and blew himself up in error. He was going home, IMHO. Pure speculation: the plot was hatched or based in Hackney. Also, I still think you’d leave a bus bag nr. the stairwell. Much less conspicuous around the other left luggage.
5. Doesn’t save much time getting off at Euston Sq rather than Gt Portland St. And the train was definitely going west – to Paddington. So the Liverpool St and Edgware Rd ones could have easily been left by the same person. Russell Sq is still a problem.
4. Press conference just said <10 pounds of explosive per bomb. No idea what that means. Also say that there are still unreachable bodies in the tunnel at Russell Square, and serious structural damage. Maybe that bomb was bigger? Or a suicide bomber?
Looks like my guess of 10-20 dead on the bus won’t be far wrong the police statement has just said "the death toll will rise, there are two sites which are very difficult to assess, Russel Square as access to the bodies is difficult and the Bus site due to the nature of the explosion"
– Bag of bits hypothesis looks very likely
Do we know that the bus bloke blew himself up at all?
D2: no we don’t. The position of the bomb (back/bottom or back/top) made me suspicious immediately, though. Plus two eyewitnesses. One from nr. the front of the bus who "saw someone explode" and one guy who got off the previous stop because "there was an olive skinned guy getting agitated and checking incessantly his rucksack".
I’ve got a bit lost with all this. Why couldn’t a single bomber have just put one on a westbound circle line at King’s Cross at about 8:41, walked to the Picadilly line and put one on a south-bound at about 8:50, then gone back to the circle line and put one on at 9:05 (the circle line can take forever to get out of Edgware Road), then gone and found a bus.
All the press reports say the bus was going South, but this might just be a misreading of the Hackney-Marble Arch designation.
Matt: this was my original theory but it relies on him being able to walk onto the train, leave his bomb and then walk off, which I think would have been noticed.
Matt: I explained above why the bus was almost certainly going north to Hackney (but certainly south down Upper Woburn Place). Also, if you look closely at the pics you can vaguely make out "30: Hackney Wick" on the front. Not proof (it could have ended up that way after the jolt), but suggestive. He couldn’t have got on that bus at KX.
Plus, for your theory, he has to get on the train, dump a bag and split. Too suspicious. Much easier to ride a stop or 2 and dump a bag. Which then creates problems: there’s no way back from the Russell Square bomb. He couldn’t have got off the train as it blew before the next stop. And that one can’t go last (or first). Definitely at the very least two bombers.
It can go on first if it goes on at Finsbury Park in my somewhat unlikely Beau Geste scenario.
True, but the whole thing is much easier with 2 people. Suicide bomber one dumps on the eastbound Hammersmith and City and goes back to KX and blows himself up on the Picc. (Or the bomb on the Picc isn’t a suicide bombing at all just another device left by another conspirator. The trouble is, if that bomb was put on at KX, chances are it was a suicide bomber. Either that or someone put it on at Finsbury Park, like you say.) Suicide bomber 2 dumps one bag on the westbound Circle that explodes at Edgware Rd, changes his mind and buggers off home on the 30. Sits at the back, checking his bag nervously.
I take your points Jarndyce, it’s just the press seem to be saying the opposite (‘heading south’ in the Scotsman). This could be because they misread the ‘Hackney to Marble Arch’ designation.
I’m not totally sure one can’t walk on a crowded tube, leave a bag and get off without anyone noticing, perhaps if it was very crowded and it was only small. But certainly it’ would be impossible to pull the trick three times.
I remember in London in 1999 (or 2000?) when that bomber was bombing Brixton, and Brick Lane, I was in the Euston Flyer (lovely place) seeing a friend off at King’s Cross and there was this old and tatty, but full, rucksack in the middle of the pub on its own. After about half an hour or ‘shall we say something’ I told the landlord, who made everyone stand at the other side of the pub whilst he took a running kick at it. I assume he knew it was harmless…
Have you read Hitchens’ latest?!
You’re right, Matt. But as I know the area so well and use that bus, I’ll stick my neck out and say the press have it wrong. Yes, the bus was going south down Upper Woburn Place (that’s what fooled ’em). But only because it was a northbound bus diverted because of the closure of Euston Rd/King’s Cross. A southbound 30 would have no reason at all to be going south down that road. After KX, it goes Euston, Gt Portland St and into the West End. None of that was closed, even if it could have got past KX then, which it couldn’t.
Has anyone else noticed, setting off bombs on London’s public transport is likely to kill a number of Moslem people?
Now, what sort of person hates the very idea of (a)public transport and (b)Moslems?
Hmmm…
Matt; the bus was heading south down the road it was on, but it was on a northbound route.
With the commitment to accuracy that you’ve come to expect from me I actually just got the no.30 bus, from Baker Street to Great Portland Street. More importantly the Evening Standard has a very good picture of bus, said to be taken a few seconds after it exploded (I imagine a few minutes) and it clearly says Hackney Wick, as Jarndyce says. The text says it was going the other way, but it also says it had just left Euston, which implies (again as Jarndyce said) it was a north-bound bus.
The BBC are now reporting 13 killed in the bus on Tavistock Place.
1. There’s also an interview with the driver. He doesn’t say which way he was travelling, though he says he was diverted because there were too many people leaving a tube station (Euston Road? King’s Cross?)
2. AP report an expert saying it was probably plastic explosive, but not Semtex.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5127995,00.html
Very confusing comment by Mark Urban on Newsnight. He says BBC Six PM news police wrong in saying Edgware Road at 9:17, actually at 8:53. Yet BBC website still says 9:17.
This is also strange because yesterday lunchtime it was said to be 8:53, as I thought that’s the time I usually pass through there. Then later it was 9:17, which I thought was the time I actually pass through there if I’m being honest.
Not wishing to morbidly point out my accuracy but my estimate of 10-20 has been proven correct. I have some expertise in the area of explosives you see….
It wasn’t me BTW…..
there were major delays on picc line because of something to do with caledonian rd
I read that the israelis stated if you find a decapitated head then that person is either a suicide bomber or leaning over the bomb at the time of exposion.
If the police say there are 4 bombers then I assume they found 4 heads and those heads belong to the 4 suicide bombers