Eyewitnesses tell of carnage

Scores of commuters have been rushed to hospital following the explosions
13 April 2012

Eye-witnesses have been giving their accounts of the devastation caused throughout central London following a series of terrorist blasts, including reports of bodies piled in the wreckage of damaged Tube trains and a bus packed with commuters being ripped apart.

Passengers involved in the Metropolitan Line explosion at Edgware Road are reported to have attempted to smash the windows of their Tube carriages with umbrellas in an attempt to escape.

Bradley Anderson told Sky News that he was involved in the Edgware Road incident on a Circle line train. He said: "We just left Paddington station. About 15 seconds later there was some kind of explosion and we collided with another train. We were heading into the station when there was some kind of explosion or something. Everything went black and we collided into some kind of oncoming train. There was debris all over the trains the they evacuated us."

Simon Corvett, 26, from Oxford, was on the eastbound train leaving Edgware Road Tube station when the explosion happened. He said: "All of sudden there was this massive huge bang. It was absolutely deafening and all the windows shattered. The glass did not actually fall out of the windows, it just cracked. The train came to a grinding halt, everyone fell off their seats." Mr Corvett, said the commuter train was absolutely packed. "There were just loads of people screaming and the carriages filled with smoke. You couldn't really breathe and you couldn't see what was happening.”

Student Sarah Reid, 23, was evacuated from Liverpool Street station. She told how she saw a carriage in her train ripped apart with the roof blown off. She said: “I was on the train and there was a fire outside the carriage window and then there was a sudden jolt which shook us forward. The explosion was behind me. I think some people may have died”. She said there was a fire which she had seen initially outside the window of her carriage. Describing being led away from the scene, she said: "A carriage was split in two, all jagged, and without a roof, just open. I saw bodies, I think."

Loyita Worley, 49, was travelling to work on the Tube between Liverpool Street and Aldgate when an explosion struck the neighbouring carriage. She said: "There was a big bang and then all the ash. I could not breathe. It was falling down everywhere and over everything. Some people started to panic but most were okay. We tried to open the doors but the doors were fixed shut and the ash was settling everywhere. People had blood dripping off them, they were all white.”

An eyewitness in the Tavistock Place area were a bomb is believed to have exploded on a bus told Sky News: "I was walking along. There was a whole crowd of people around the bus. The next thing I knew I was on the floor. There was shedloads of glass raining down. Someone fell on me and someone fell on him. For a moment I thought I was going to be trampled. I picked myself up and everyone was running. There was glass everywhere. We ran into a building and a security guard was saying 'get in, get in'.”

Another eye-witness in the area, Raj Mattoo, 35, said was standing on a corner when the bus exploded nearby. "The explosion seemed to be at the back of the bus. The roof flew off and went up about 10 metres. It then floated back down. I shouted at the passengers to get off the bus. There were obviously people badly injured.”

Cycle courier Andrew Childes, 36, was on his way to work near Tavistock Place when the bus blast happened. He said: "I heard a bang, a thudding deep sound. There was a big cloud of grey smoke. I was about 250 metres away at the time and I stopped dead in my tracks. The bus was just splintered metal, and it was all bent over. The top part of the bus was completely exposed, as if the roof had been ripped off it.

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