Looking back: London bombings of 2005

The morning rush was just winding down for London commuters on July 7, 2005 when a set of carefully coordinated bombings hit the transit system. The blasts killed 52 people and injured almost 800.

Bombs were placed on three separate trains in the London Underground, by three different bombers. The first, left next to a set of doors in the front carriage of a southbound Piccadilly train, exploded at 8:50 BST.

Within 50 seconds, two more bombs exploded on the Circle Line, one on an eastbound train, the other on a westbound train. In less than a minute, 42 people were dead and 674 injured.

Panicked survivors screamed and cried in the deeper, smaller Piccadilly tunnel. While emergency personnel rushed to their aid, survivors were being led out of the Circle tunnels, past twisted wreckage and mangled corpses.

Less than an hour later, a double-decker bus passed by the British Medical Association building, a bomb laying in a backpack at the rear of the upper deck.

At 9:47, it exploded. Thirteen people were killed in the blast, and doctors from the BMA building ran out to the street and began to care for the 110 injured.

Within a couple of hours of the bombings, police commissioner Ian Blair and Home Secretary Charles Clarke had labelled the blasts terrorist attacks. Officials combed through the wreckage and pored over hours of close-circuit television footage of the underground system.

Suicide bombers

Evidence pointed to the involvement of suicide bombers in the attacks. Remarkably, they were “homegrown terrorists,” not foreign attackers like the ones who perpetrated 9/11. They were British residents and citizens who had grown up in the country.

The oldest bomber was identified as Mohammad Sidique Khan, a 30-year-old teaching assistant and British citizen of Pakistani immigrants. Teenage friends recalled him as being highly assimilated into Western culture.

Khan made a video before the attacks that was released in September 2005. In his Yorkshire accent, he talked about “our beloved sheik, Osama bin Laden,” and said, “We are at war, and I am a soldier and now you too will taste the reality of this situation.” He said the British government had committed atrocities against Muslims.

The other Circle line bomber was identified as 22-year-old Shehzad Tanweer, born in Bradford. Tanweer and Khan had travelled to Karachi, Pakistan together the year before the attacks.

Tanweer made a video similar to Khan’s before the attacks, which was released almost a year after the tragedy. In the video, he states that attacks will continue “until you pull your forces out of Afghanistan and Iraq.”

Also appearing in the video is Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda’s second in command.

The Piccadilly bomber was identified as 19-year-old Germaine Lindsay, a Jamaican-born British resident who grew up in West Yorkshire, near the homes of the three other bombers. Lindsay detonated the deadliest bomb in the attacks, killing 26 people.

The last bomber, and the youngest of the group, was identified as 18-year-old Hasib Mir Hussain. He was a British citizen who grew up on the outskirts of Leeds with his Pakistani parents. Hussain detonated the bus bomb that claimed 13 lives.