The London Bombings

As most of you are aware, terrorists attacked Britain today believing they will be like the Spanish and cut and run. I hope they are mistaken. The British have seen much worse then this.

Four blasts rocked the London subway and tore open a packed
double-decker bus during the morning rush hour Thursday, sending bloodied victims fleeing after what a shaken Prime Minister Tony Blair called “barbaric” terrorist attacks. Two U.S. law enforcement officials said at least 40 people were killed and London hospitals reported more than 350 wounded. Blair said the “terrorist attacks” were clearly designed to coincide with the G-8 summit opening in Gleneagles, Scotland.

The explosions hit three subway stations and a double-decker bus in rapid succession between 8:30 and 9:30 a.m. local time. Implementing an emergency plan, authorities immediately shut down the subway and bus lines that log 8.4 million passenger trips every weekday. It brought the city’s transportation system to a halt.

“It was chaos,” said Gary Lewis, 32, who was evacuated from a subway train at King’s Cross station. “The one haunting image was someone whose face was totally black and pouring with blood.”

Blair, flanked by fellow G-8 leaders, including President Bush, said: “We shall prevail and they shall not.”

Earlier, a shaken Blair said, “Whatever they do, it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and in other civilized nations throughout the world.”

The British are a strong people who held up against a similar evil, Hitler and his bombings, and came out winners just as they will again. The Captain makes the same point:

Hitler didn’t succeed at his campaign of intimidation. Osama bin Laden won’t either. Put simply, the British are not Spaniards. They will arise in fury and a renewed sense of mission to stamp out the bloodthirsty terrorists who have committed this heinous act — and we will stand with them to do so, just as they have stood with us these long years since 9/11.

Josh Trevino, who is enroute to London from Scotland, has some comments:

As I write, I sit in a terminal at Edinburgh Airport. I am London-bound in one hour. A crowd is gathered, rapt, about a flatscreen that has been repurposed from displaying departures information to Sky News. The scenes from London we’ve seen before: the wailing sirens, the wreckage in the streets, the wounded staggering about, the dust-covered civilians. Only before it was New York, Jerusalem, Istanbul, Madrid. Now, in London’s agony, only the details are changed.

…

Sky News speculates that this is somehow the work of anti-globalization activists. But everyone knows this is a classic al Qaeda operation: civilian targets, mass casualties, simultaneous attacks. Confirmation will come in time. The immediate matter is to sort the living from the dead, care for the former, and bury the latter.

Once buried, it will be time to avenge them.

Perhaps the villains’ expectation is that the Briton will quail as the Spaniard, reacting to massacre with headlong flight from foreign fields. I think not. About me, I see older Scots with a steely flint in
their eyes. The reckoning will come. There is a soul of honor beneath the ribs of death.

The reckoning will come.

UPDATE 7/7 1830hrs

It looks like the total dead from this incident is 37:

Terror struck in the heart of London on Thursday as explosions ripped through three subway trains and blasted the roof off a crowded red double-decker bus. At least 37 people were killed and more than 700 wounded in the deadliest attack on the city since the blitz in World War II.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair blamed Islamic extremists and said the bombings were designed to coincide with the opening in Scotland of a G-8 summit of the world’s most powerful leaders. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said the bombings ?? which came the day after London won the bid to host the 2012 Olympics ?? have the “hallmarks of an al-Qaida-related attack.”

Police said there had been no warning and that the blasts at three subway stations went off within 26 minutes, starting at 8:51 a.m. in an Underground train just outside the financial district. Authorities initially blamed a power surge but realized it was a terror attack after the bus bombing near the British Museum at 9:47 a.m. ?? less than an hour after the first explosion.

What’s humorous is that Al-Qaeda is blaming this Briton’sans support of Iraq and Afghanistan. What were their reasons for 9/11 then? You guessed it, they will find a reason to hate the west, doesn’t matter what we do, they hate us and want to see us destroyed. These terrorists are nothing but pathetic human beings and deserve no mercy. No mercy.

Europhobia has some interesting observations on the locations of the attacks:

Liverpool St/Aldgate East/Moorgate was all the same incident.
– this is near Brick Lane, with a sizable Bangladeshi/Muslim community.

Edgeware Road
– the heart of a major Arab/Muslim community

King’s Cross/Russell Square and Woburn Place
– by the King’s Cross Estate, with a sizable Bangladeshi/Muslim community, plus the School of Oriental and African Studies, one of the world’s leading universities for the study of Islam (amongst others)

Was this intended to stir up anti-Muslim tension as much as anything? Otherwise the locations are rather bizarre – King’s Cross and Liverpool Street, as major rail termini, make sense if you intend to cause maximum damage/casualties. Edgeware Road is near Paddington, another major station, so that could make sense too. But nothing at Charing Cross, Victoria, Waterloo etc. Nothing at Heathrow or Gatwick either. Odd. Why go for half measures?

Also Justin at Pfff was at one of the bombing sites during the attack and writes a first hand account:

The train left the tracks and started to rumble down the tunnel. It was incapable of stopping and just rolled on. A series of explosions followed as if tube electric motor after motor was exploding. Each explosion shook the train in the air and seems to make it land at a lower point.

I fell to the ground like most people, scrunched up in a ball in minimize injury. At this point I wondered if the train would ever stop, I thought “please make it stop”, but it kept going. In the end I just wished that it didn’t hit something and crush. It didn’t.

When the train came to a standstill people were screaming, but mainly due to panic as the carriage was rapidly filling with smoke and the smell of burning motors was giving clear clues of fire.

As little as 5 seconds later we were unable to see and had all hit the ground for the precious air that remaining. We were all literally choking to death.

Mike at Mike’s America wonders if any of those recently released British prisoners from Gitmo will have something to do with these attacks.

Check out Instapundit, Tim Worstall, Europhobia, & Command Post for more.