Shocked by the horror into eerie silence

THE first thing that hit you was the silence. One of the world’s noisiest, most vibrant cities had fallen quiet, shocked by the horror unfolding before it.

Only the sudden wail of sirens pierced the eerie spell as the wounded staggered from twisted carriages beneath its streets and the bus wreckage above.

As the No 30 Hackney to Marble Arch double decker turned into Tavistock Square yesterday morning, it was especially crowded. Many of those who died were on the bus because the underground line they usually take was shut for repairs.

Many of the survivors made it because the blast occurred directly outside the headquarters of the British Medical Association, ensuring expert help was immediately available. The hand of fate can rarely have been so cruel and so kind in the same instance.

The square was still dappled in brilliant July sunshine when I reached its edge, the bewildered and the crying clung to the side streets around, unable to leave its morbid pull and forbidden to enter as police tried to cope with the nightmare.

In nearby Bloomsbury Square, a London 2012 banner fluttered in the light summer breeze. Three yards away a blood splattered silver foil emergency blanket clung to the iron railings and dragged out across the pavement. What a difference a day makes. So long a signature symbol of London, the image of a red bus - decapitated and shredded - has now been seared into the global consciousness as the gruesome totem of this attack.

A mundane trip to the bank became a life-defining moment for Ayobami Bello as he turned to see the bus detonate metres from where he was standing.

“It was terrible. The bus went to pieces. There were so many bodies on the ground.

“The back was completely gone. It was blown off, and there was a dead body hanging out and there were bodies on the road. It was a horrible thing. There were bodies slumped on the back seat, some missing arms and legs.”

But the horror above ground only hinted at the panic, the stench of death, that must have consumed those caught up in the blackened tunnels below.

“There were bodies lying between the tracks, most of their clothes had been blown off and they were covered in blood,” one survivor said.

“I was being twisted and thrown to the ground. I thought I wasn’t going to get out of this - whatever it was - I just didn’t know. I thought that was it when it all went so dark. Then I touched my hand to my face and felt the blood and knew it wasn’t all over yet.

“I am an extremely lucky man, I’m very lucky indeed, especially as I saw what happened in the next carriage. The bomb must have been within 10 feet of me, but that carriage took most of the blast.”

“We could hear the screams from the carriage where the bomb had gone off - they were trapped in the twisted metal,” another commuter confessed.

It was a day when humanity was inverted. Hotels were turned into mortuaries, tube trains became temporary mass graves and benches doubled as operating tables as doctors battled to save the dying where they lay.

It was the greatest attack London has endured since the Second World War. It maimed and injured indiscriminately - Muslim, Jew, Christian - the death toll was all that mattered. Horrific as it was, the chilling fact is it should have been much worse - it still cowers in the shadow of Madrid, the wake of the World Trade Center.

London felt different last night, the Olympic glow of just hours earlier was lost forever.

The “if” had become the “now”. A few streets from the bus wreckage stands the British Museum, a monument to 10,000 years of civilisation triumph.

Tavistock Square now stands as a monument to barbarism and human failure. The scale of the violence provoked a hushed shock, the random nature of it induced terror, but London knew it was coming. London knows it will come again.