7 July bombings

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The London underground has 400 kilometres of track, 275 stations and 940 million passengers/year.
The first line was started up in 1863, it’s called the metropolitan railway. The London underground is the oldest and longest subway in the world!

The 7 July 2005 there was four bombings in the public transport system of London. Three of them were detonated in the London underground and one exploded on a double-decker bus. The three underground-bombs exploded within 50 seconds of each other.

The first bomb exploded on an eastbound Circle Lin subsurface Underground train travelling between Liverpool Street and Aldgate. Seven people got killed in the explosion.
The second bomb exploded on the second carriage of a westbound Circle Line subsurface Underground train. There were several other trains that were damaged, as they were nearby the exploding bomb. Six people died.
The third bomb exploded on a southbound Piccadilly Line deep-level Underground train. 26 people got killed.

About one houer later, 9:47 am, there was an explosion on a double-decker bus. At the time of the explosion the bus was travelling through Tavistock Square. The bomb destroyed the roof of the top deck and the back of the bus. Witnesses reported seeing “half a bus flying through the air”.

At first people thought there had been six explosions instead of three in the Underground. This misunderstanding depend on that the trains were between two stations at the time of the explosions went off, and that made an impression that there was an incident at each station.

At the time of the bombings, the UK was hosting the 31st G8summit, and the bombings came one day after London was chosen to host the 2012 Summer Olympics.

Afterwards the attacks, the security all across the UK was raised to the highest alert level. Many other countries also raised their own terror alert status (for example: Canada, United States, France and Germany), especially for the public transport system.

Before the suspicions of terrorist attacks, they thought that the explosions were caused by a technical problem in the Underground power system. But after a few hours the bombings, the established that the bombings were terrorist attacks.

Fifty-two people were murdered in the attacks and about 700 people were injured. The attacks were the deadliest terror attacks in the UK since 1988 and in London there hasn’t been any larger bombing since the Second World War. The attacks were also the first suicide bombings in the Western Europe.

The organisation Al-Qaeda took responsibility for the attacks in a statement where they said that the reason of the attacks was the British involvement in the 2003 invasion of Iraq and the US invasion of Afghanistan. They also warned the other governments who were involved in the the invasion f Iraq, they especially warned Denmark and Italy.

There were four suicide bombers and they were all male.
Mohammed Sidique Khan was the bomber of the Edgware Road Tube, he had a wife who was pregnant and a young child. The bomber of the Aldgate Tube was Shehzad Tanweer and worked in a fish & chips shop. Germaine Lindsay was the bomber of the Russel Square Tube, he hada wife who was pregnant. And the bombe of the bus at Tavistock Square was named Hasib Hussain and lived in Leeds.

A year after the bombings the subways are filled with Londoners and the tourists are finding their way back to London.
But there have been some effects; the citizens have become more suspicious and doubtful about foreigners and Muslims.
All London underground services were suspended for a couple of days after the terror attacks.
The security has been updated, there are for example cameras installed in some of the trains and in 4 out of 5 London buses.
The computer system reacts when there are sudden changes in the pictures, for example when there’s a big crowd gathering or when a bag is left on the station.
Changes have been made because they want to be prepared if there will be another attack in the subways.


JEAN CHARLES MENEZES

He was born the 7th of January; he worked as an electrician and lived in Tulse Hill in south London.
Jean Charles Menezes was shot and killed because unarmed police officers had mistaken him for a suspect in the failed bombings the day before the shooting took place at the Stockwell tube station.
Police officers followed Menezes on to a bus, and reported to Gold Command that the description of two of the previous day''''s suspects, matched with Menezes. They were sure that Menezes was the right man, because they thought he “had Mongolian eyes”.
He was shot seven times in the head and one in the shoulder.

21 july


Two weeks after the 7 July bombings, on 21 july 2005, fourt attempted bomb attacks disrupted part of London’s public transport system. The explosions occurred on London Underground around midday, at Shepherd’s Bush, Warren street and Oval stations, and on a bus in Bethnal Green.
Connecting lines and stations were closed and evacuated. Metropolitan Police later said the intention was to cause large-scale loss of life, but only the detonators of the bombs exploded
Only one minor injury was reported.

Both 7 July and 21 Julys sets of bombings involved three Underground trains and a bus; in both cases the three Underground explosions were roughly simultaneous while the bus explosion was an hour later.

We contacted the Swedish embassy in London and asked them a few questions about how they got affected and the measures they took when this happened.
They say that they had to get all the information they could about the attacks and they got phone calls from worried people, both in London and in Sweden. They also kept contact with the U.D of Sweden all the time.
We asked them if they had responsibility to take care of any Swedish victims, and they said that that is a part of their job but happily there were no Swedish among the injured...