Terror on the Tube

PANICKED commuters fled from a packed peak-hour train in southwest London yesterday after a bag exploded in a terror attack at Parsons Green Underground station.

Screaming people with facial burns ran from the crowded Tube train as the doors flung open after “fireball flew down a carriage”, witnesses said.

Passengers said they saw a “flash” and heard a loud “bang” before the train carriage filled with smoke.

At least 20 people were be- lieved to have suffered severe facial injuries and burns. One woman was reportedly evacuated from the station with her legs wrapped in bandages.

Other passengers were rushed from the scene with facial burns including some with their hair singed to the skin.

London’s Metropolitan Police Counter Terrorism Command is leading the investigation and the blast is being treated as a terrorist attack, according to initial reports.

Armed police swarmed the station, yelling at bystanders to get away from the packed train station.

Amid chaotic scenes, some people were injured in the rush to leave the station. In the stampede, people fell over each other while others sat on the floor in tears.

The blast occurred just after 8.20am English time.

The explosion appeared to come from a plastic Lidl supermarket shopping bag left by the carriage door. Photos on social media taken by a commuter show wires coming out of a bucket inside the burning bag.

A local man, known as Peter, told local radio he had suffered minor burns from the explosion.

“Everyone ran off the Tube, it was panic stations,” Peter said.

“I just turned to see and realised it was the one explosion and there wasn’t a continuation of the fire.”

According to Peter, one man who was closer to the fireball had his puffer jacket melted off by the flames.

A local Metro newspaper reporter said people were “really badly burned” and “their hair was coming off”.

One man who was interviewed at the station by the BBC said people rushing from the station told him they saw “a wall of flame coming down the carriage”.

A woman on the train told the BBC she heard a loud bang and saw flames but she was shielded by the large crowd of commuters.

“The doors opened immediately and people just ran,” she said.

The UK has suffered four attacks blamed on terrorists so far this year, which have killed 36 people.

In 2005, 52 people died when four British Islamists carried out suicide bomb attacks on three London Underground trains and a bus.