Bombed bus was packed with commuters fleeing Tube

EXACTLY 30 minutes after the first bomb blast at Edgware Road, a bomb tore the roof off a red number 30 double decker bus packed with commuters forced above ground after the Tube network had been shut down.

Scotland Yard said last night that two people were confirmed dead in the bus blast but eyewitnesses spoke of seeing more bodies.

Doctors at the British Medical Association helped treat casualties after the bus explosion outside their headquarters. The front of BMA House in Tavistock Square in central London was splattered with blood and body parts were strewn across the road, according to one doctor who helped treat the injured.

The building was used as a mini hospital while casualties were moved away from the road and were waiting to be taken to hospital.

Dr Laurence Buckman said two people died in the BMA courtyard as doctors tried to treat them.

Dr Jane Collins, chief executive of Great Ormond Street Children’s Hospital, said 22 patients from the Russell Square area incident were treated during the day, some of whom were hospital staff caught up in the blasts on their way to work.

She said 18 of these were admitted and likely to stay overnight, and four were walking wounded.

There were still two patients undergoing surgery in the hospital’s operating theatres and another patient in intensive care, she said.

“Unfortunately a couple of people who came here were members of our staff,” she said.

University College Hospital in central London, near the scene of the Russell Square blast, said it treated 58 casualties. Some 27 people were admitted and nine or 10 were classed as seriously injured.

Professor Jim Ryan, senior A&E consultant who is leading the major incident team, said:

“They have fragmentation, skin, inhalation and limb injuries.”

During the afternoon police started letting out numbers of people who had been trapped within the cordoned off areas covering Tavistock and Russell Square.

A van carrying blood supplies also raced through Russell Square breaking through police Do Not Cross tape towards Russell Square tube station.

* RUSSELL SQUARE in the heart of Bloomsbury is a hugely popular location for tourists, Americans in particular, with easy access by foot to the nearby British Museum, London’s theatreland, the wine bars and piazzas of Covent Garden and the shops of Oxford Street and Regent Street. It also provides offices for several faculties of the University of London.

The square itself is dominated by the grandiose Victorian facade of the 300-bed Russell Hotel whose bars and restaurants commemorate the area’s literary links with writers Virginia Woolf and Lytton Strachey.