London British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw says Thursday's bombings in London have the hallmarks of an al-Qaida related attack. Thirty-seven people were confirmed dead in the attacks on London's transportation system. About 700 others were injured.
After the chaos of the morning when police tried to get those injured to the hospital, and bring an end to the pandemonium, the evening rush hour in London was orderly. With buses out of service and the underground trains at a halt, many people had no choice but to walk home.
"I think I'm going to have a long walk home, actually. Going to set off in a couple of minutes. Hope to get home before midnight tonight," said one London worker.
The morning was a scene of horror after bombs exploded on three of London's underground trains. And destroyed a bus. Bloodied survivors spoke of their ordeal.
A terrified commuter told of her ordeal. "None of us knew what happened and everything was mayhem and the driver came out of the carriage, which was quite scary, because he shone a red light. And we all thought, I just thought, I was dead."
British Prime Minister Tony Blair rushed back from the G8 summit of leading industrialized countries in Scotland. He said the British people would not be cowed by terrorists.
"I think we all know what they are trying to do.They are trying to use the slaughter of innocent people to cow us, to frighten us out of doing the things that we want to do, of trying to stop us from going about our business as normal, as we are entitled to do. And they should not. And they must not succeed," emphasized the prime minister.
VOA's Michael Drudge reports from London that a massive investigation is under way.
London provided the perfect setting for a terrorist attack according to terrorism expert Raymond Tanter, a professor at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
"It takes about six months to carry out a terrorist attack with this kind of coordinated timing. So I suspect that they knew the G8 summit was coming and they decided that this would be a good place to hit, because guess what? The whole world is watching Scotland."
If the terrorist attack is the work of al-Qaida, it is the first such attack in Britain.