LONDON
— Alex Ojeda-Sierra, 13, was on the train to school with a friend when
they heard screaming and saw passengers running past.
Unknown to the boys, a bomb had exploded in another car.
“I
dropped my bag and we started running,” Alex, who attends the London
Oratory School, said from a wheelchair at Chelsea and Westminster
Hospital, where he was treated for facial bruises and sprains when he
tripped in the panicky crush of fleeing commuters.
“One
man fell on me and I had my legs bent backwards and my right ankle got
twisted and I started screaming that I had no air,” he said.
The
bomb, wrapped in a plastic grocery bag concealed in a bucket, exploded
at 8:20 a.m. Friday at the height of the morning rush. The explosion and
panic left 29 people injured, but none were killed.
It
was the fifth terror attack in Britain this year and the first to hit
London at its most vulnerable point — mass transit — since the 2005 bombings that killed 52.
The
Islamic State asserted responsibility for the bucket bomb hours later
in a message on its Amaq news site that said a “detachment” of its
disciples had carried out the attack — language that suggested more than
one assailant.
Prime
Minister Theresa May, calling the blast a “cowardly attack,” said the
national threat level had been raised a notch to “critical,” the
highest.
The
bomb exploded just after the train drew into Parsons Green, an elevated
station in a quiet and affluent part of West London. It burned at least
one passenger, who was carried away on a stretcher, and led to a
stampede that injured others.
The
attack revived the specter of mass casualties from terrorism on the
London Underground, commonly known as the Tube, the world’s oldest
subway system and one of the busiest. Though one would-be attacker tried
to bomb an Underground train in 2016, the device failed to detonate.
The most recent attackers in London, and across Europe, have instead used vans and cars as weapons to crush and maim people.
The
head of security on the Underground at the time of the 2005 attacks,
Geoff Dunlop, said it was unsurprising that terrorism had returned to
the Underground.
“You
can do an awful lot to make it safer but you can never totally secure
it because of the very nature of it,” said Mr. Dunlop, who left the
Underground in 2013 and now works as a private security consultant. “It
has to be open.”
Witnesses on the train described a tremor, a wave of heat and then a barrage of flames that quickly dissipated.
“The
train was packed, and I was down the other side of the carriage
standing up, looking at my phone and then I heard a big boom and felt
this heat on my face,” said Natalie Belford, 42, a hairdresser and
beautician who was on the train. “I ran for my life, but there was no
way out. The doors were full of people and the carriage was too packed
to move down.”
London’s
mayor, Sadiq Khan, a face of resolve following the earlier attacks,
issued a defiant statement on Facebook that hinted at how terror attacks
had become a new normal in the capital.
“Our
city utterly condemns the hideous individuals who attempt to use terror
to harm us and destroy our way of life,” Mr. Khan wrote. “As London has
proven again and again, we will never be intimidated or defeated by
terrorism.”
The
police were combing through the extensive CCTV footage that blankets
all Underground stations, with particular attention to the handful of
stations to the west of Parsons Green.
It was unclear by Friday night whether any possible suspects had been identified from CCTV surveillance.
Roy Ramm,
a former commander of specialist operations at Scotland Yard, said that
police would be undertaking a comprehensive forensic examination of the
train and the device to determine what happened.
“The
police will also ask witnesses the age-old question: Did anyone see
what happened?” he said. “They will be investigating what the detonation
mechanism was and going through CCTV footage to see who might be behind
it.”
Recent Terrorist Attacks in London
The
device did not appear to detonate properly, as the bucket, the bag and a
series of wires all remained intact even after the explosion.
Many
of the victims seemed to have been hurt by the panicked rush to escape
the scene, rather than the explosion itself. Ms. Belford, the
hairdresser, said she was knocked over twice, and showed a reporter her
ripped tights and bloodied knee.
While
Londoners are largely hardened to terrorism and determined to defy the
threat, Uber use in west London surged to three times its normal rate
after the attack, the company said. But it was unclear whether
passengers were turning to the ride service out of fear or practicality;
part of the Underground system was suspended following the attack.
Lorna
Fletcher, a resident of the Parsons Green neighborhood, said she
already tried to avoid using the subway precisely because of the
possibility of this kind of event.
“At
the weekends I always try and get my friends to come out here – that
way I don’t have to travel far and it’s not playing on the back of
mind,“ Ms. Fletcher said. “It was only a matter of a time before the
trains would get attacked.”
The
suburban setting of the attack, several miles west of downtown London,
sparked debate about whether the bomb had been mistakenly detonated
prematurely – or was purposely meant to highlight how no part of the
city is safe.
“Parsons
Green is not emblematic or symbolic, and I think that will be a
puzzlement for investigating officers, who will ask: Was it intended to
be detonated or did it go off there by accident?” Mr. Ramm said. “If you
look at a list of target areas in London, Parsons Green would not be in
the top 100.”
Local
residents echoed Mr. Ramm’s surprise. “My American friends just moved
out here with their children because we told them it was one of the
safest parts of London. I feel foolish now,” said Rachel Palmer, 34, a
mother of two. “I just never imagined it would happen out here.”
Tensions
were heightened in the neighborhood after police sealed off several
nearby streets and buildings, including Lady Margaret’s school for
girls, where students were kept under lockdown for hours.
Life
nevertheless continued largely as normal across most other parts of
London. While the 2005 attacks led to a shutdown of large parts of the
subway network, only a small section close to Parsons Green was
suspended on Friday. Large crowds of tourists gathered outside
Buckingham Palace, the official residence of the Queen, Elizabeth II.
Hugh
Coyne, a physician at a medical practice near the station, said he went
to the scene to offer help to emergency workers, only to be told there
were no major injuries to treat.
The
attack led to tensions between President Trump and the British
authorities, who were annoyed that Mr. Trump had appeared to imply in a
tweet that the attacker or attackers were known to Scotland Yard, the
headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, London’s law enforcement
agency.
Mrs. May said Mr. Trump’s statement was unhelpful and the Metropolitan Police said it was “pure speculation.”
After
a terror attack in Manchester this summer, American officials angered
their British counterparts by leaking information shared with them by
the British police.
In
June, Mr. Trump was also entangled in a separate spat with the London
mayor, Mr. Khan, in which he criticized Mr. Khan’s response to an attack
on London Bridge that left seven dead.
