U.K. threat level raised to ‘critical’
Subway bombing injures 29 after device appears not to have fully detonated
A homemade bomb planted in a rush-hour subway car exploded in London on Friday, injuring 29 people and prompting authorities to raise Britain’s terrorism threat level to “critical,” meaning another attack may be imminent.
The early morning blast sparked a huge manhunt for the perpetrators of what police said was the fourth terrorist attack in the British capital this year.
Prime Minister Theresa May, acting on the recommendation of the Joint Terrorism Analysis Center, raised the country’s threat level from “severe” to “critical” — its highest possible level. May said military troops would augment the police presence in a “proportionate and sensible step.” Earlier, she said the device had been “intended to cause significant harm.”
Still, to the relief of authorities and Londoners, experts said the bomb — hidden in a plastic bucket inside a supermarket freezer bag — only partly exploded, sparing the city much worse carnage.
“I would say this was a failed high-explosive device,” Chris Hunter, a former British army bomb expert, said of the blast, which caused no serious injuries.
The Islamic State group claimed responsibility, and said it was carried out by an affiliated unit.
The bomb went off about 8:20 a.m. as the train, carrying commuters from the suburbs — including many schoolchildren — was at Parsons Green station in the southwest of the city. Witness Chris Wildish told Sky News that he saw “out of the corner of my eye, a massive flash of flames that went up the side of the train,” followed by “an acrid chemical smell.”
Commuter Lauren Hubbard said she was on the train when she heard a loud bang.
“I looked around and this wall of fire was just coming toward us.”
Chaos ensued as hundreds of people, some of them suffering burns, poured from the train, which can hold up to 800 people.
“I ended up squashed on the staircase. People were falling over, people fainting, crying. There were little kids clinging onto the back of me,” said another commuter, Ryan Barnett.
Passenger Luke Walmsley said it was “like every man for himself to get down the stairs.”
“People were just pushing. There were nannies or mums asking where their children were.”
Police and health officials said 29 people were treated in London hospitals, most of them for flash burns. None of the injuries were serious or life-threatening, the emergency services said.
Trains were suspended along a stretch of the Underground’s District Line, and several homes were evacuated as police set up a 50-metre cordon around the scene as they secured the device and launched a search for those who planted it.
The Metropolitan Police said hundreds of detectives, along with agents of the domestic spy agency MI5, were looking at surveillance camera footage, carrying out forensic work and speaking to witnesses.
Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said police were making “good progress” and the public should be reassured more police and troops will be on the streets.
“We are only aware of one device,” he said. “We have remnants of that device. We are chasing down suspects.”
He refused to provide further details, except to say the bomb involved the “detonation of an improvised explosive device.”
Among the questions authorities were seeking to answer: What was the device made from, and was it meant to go off when it did, in a leafy, affluent part of the city far from London’s top tourist sites?
British media reported the bomb included a timer. Lewis Herrington, a terrorism expert at Loughborough University, said that would set it apart from suicide attacks like those on the London subway in 2005 or at Manchester Arena in May, in which the attackers “all wanted to die.” Photos inside the train showed a white plastic bucket inside a foil-lined shopping bag, with flames and what appeared to be wires emerging from the top.
Britain has seen four other terrorist attacks this year, which killed a total of 36 people.
The other attacks in London — near Parliament, on London Bridge and near a mosque in Finsbury Park in north London — used vehicles and knives. Similar methods have been used in attacks across Europe, including in Nice, Stockholm, Berlin and Barcelona.
The last time the country’s threat level was raised to critical was after the May 22 suicide bombing at Manchester Arena that killed 22 people.