A grim list of death

THE rising death toll could yet see the July 7 bombings join the grim list of largest losses of British lives since the Second World War.

* In 1953, 307 people died when floods tore across the east coast of Britain.

* Water was a killer again in 1987 when 193 Britons perished in the Zeebrugge ferry disaster after the Herald of Free Enterprise sank.

* A total of 167 men died when the platform of the Piper Alpha oil rig turned into a fireball off the coast of Scotland in 1988.

* The Asian tsunami on Boxing Day last year is thought to have claimed the lives of 158 Britons.

* In 1966, 116 children and 28 adults were killed when a slagheap slid on to the mining village of Aberfan in South Wales.

* Britain’s worst rail disaster of modern times came in 1995 when 112 people died as three trains collided at Harrow and Wealdstone Station, London.

* In 1989, 96 people were crushed to death on an over-filled terrace at Hillsborough in Sheffield. The victims were all Liverpool fans who were there for a FA Cup semi-final clash with Nottingham Forest.

* The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York in 2001 claimed 67 Britons among the victims.

* A total of 66 football fans died at Glasgow Rangers’ Ibrox stadium in 1971 in a crush on stairway 13.

* In 1985, 56 football fans perished in a fire at Bradford City’s Valley Parade ground.

* The sinking of the Marchioness riverboat on the River Thames in London cost 51 lives in 1989.

* In 1988 terrorists blew Pan Am Flight 103 out of the air over Lockerbie in Scotland, killing 270 people, 44 of them British.