Boston Globe Article

An extract of an article where Mr Simon Thompson is referenced in the Boston Globe:
Copyright 2005 Globe Newspaper Company
The Boston Globe
July 8, 2005, Friday THIRD EDITION
SECTION: NATIONAL/FOREIGN; Pg. A1
LENGTH: 1509 words
HEADLINE: 'OUR RESOLVE WILL HOLD'
BLAIR CALLS FOR UNITY AFTER TRANSIT ATTACKS IN LONDON LEAVE 37 DEAD, 700
HURT
BYLINE: By Charles M. Sennott and Sarah Liebowitz, Globe staff and Globe
correspondent
BODY:
LONDON The British government said yesterday that a series of
coordinated bombings that struck the transport network in the heart of the
British capital during the morning rush hour bore all the "hallmarks of Al
Qaeda." The attacks killed at least 37 people and injured 700.
With no arrests and only an unconfirmed claim of responsibility,
police combed the wreckage of three London Underground trains and a bus for
forensic evidence. They also studied tapes from surveillance cameras at
almost every platform and entry to the Underground and throughout the
streets of the capital.
Just before 9 a.m. local time, three consecutive explosions in
the span of 26 minutes rocked three trains. At 9:47 a.m., near an area
packed with hotels and the British Museum, a fourth bomb ripped through one
of London's famed, red double-decker buses.
The New York Times reported today that investigators said that the
three bombs used in the subway attacks apparently were detonated by timers,
not suicide bombers, and that a fourth device may have been intended for a
target other than the city bus it destroyed.
The attacks sent commuters streaming out of the subway, their faces
streaked with soot and blood. Some survivors carried severely wounded
fellow passengers to safety.
The subway and bus system, which together handle 8.4 million passenger
trips a day, were closed all day because of fears of further attacks. By
last evening some bus service had resumed, but it was unclear when the
subway would reopen and police urged workers to stay home today.
Prime Minister Tony Blair, hosting the Group of Eight summit in
Scotland, rushed to London from the gathering of world leaders for several
hours to assess the attack. In a televised appeal for unity from the
capital, he praised the "stoicism and resilience of the British people" and
said an investigation was underway to bring those responsible to justice.
"We know that these people act in the name of Islam. But we also know
that the vast and overwhelming majority of Muslims here and abroad are
decent, law-abiding people who abhor this act of terrorism as much as we
do," he said. But Blair declared that Britain "will not be intimidated.
When they seek to change our country or our way of life by these methods,
we will not be changed," he said. "When they try to divide our people and
weaken our resolve, we will not be divided and our resolve will hold firm."
Following the attacks, the United States raised its terror alert level
to orange, or high, for the nation's mass transit systems. The level calls
on federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies and appropriate armed
forces to coordinate security efforts.
President Bush remained in Gleneagles, Scotland, with other world
leaders and expressed a collective resolve to confront international
terrorism. "The war on terror goes on," he said.
Investigators said they were searching for evidence that could determine
whether suicide bombers were involved in yesterday's attacks.
After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States and the train
bombings in Madrid in March 2004, British counterterrorism officials had
warned with varying levels of intensity that the country was vulnerable to
such an attack. Following the general election in May, British authorities
reduced the threat level when a feared terrorist attack did not
materialize.
Even if the United Kingdom was collectively shocked yesterday, it seemed
far from surprised.
Steve Cook, 36, a truck driver, was trying to make a delivery to a
business in the central London transportation hub known as King's Cross,
just after one of the blasts rocked a subway tunnel underground.
"We've been expecting it. We just didn't know when it would happen,"
Cook said amid the chaos and the wailing sirens of police and emergency
vehicles. "I guess it's just our way of life now."
An Islamic militant website posted a statement from a previously
unidentified group claiming affiliation with Al Qaeda, declaring that it
was behind the attacks. Police said they could not confirm the existence of
the group, which called itself the Secret Organization of Al Qaeda in
Europe.
But Britain's foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said the highly
coordinated bombing attacks seemed to bear "all the hallmarks of Al Qaeda."
British counterterrorism experts pointed out that Al Qaeda has become more
diffuse and fractured, and that the attacks were more likely to have been
made by a locally based group, like the one that carried out the attacks in
Madrid, than by Al Qaeda directly.
The Islamic Human Rights Commission issued a plea for Muslims in
London to stay off the streets for their own safety.
"The Islamic Human Rights Commission utterly condemns this attack, but
now we appeal that there should be no further victims as a result of
reprisals," said Massoud Shadjareh, an organization leader.
Brian Paddick, deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan
Police also known as Scotland Yard, said at a press conference that no
arrests had been made and that no warnings or claims of responsibility had
been directly received.
Citing British counterterrorism forces' extensive investigations and
arrests of suspected terrorists in the last four years, Paddick added: "At
the end of the day, it is not possible to 100 percent secure the capital
against these kinds of people intent on carrying out these kinds of
attacks."
Hours before the attacks yesterday, London awoke to newspapers splashed
with the good news that the city had been selected to host the 2012 Olympic
Games. There was also an air of optimism and confidence after the
London-centered Live 8 concerts and the start of the G-8 summit in which
Blair was leading an international effort to provide more aid to Africa and
do more to reduce global warming.
But during the rush hour, London found itself face to face with horror
and mayhem in a downtown packed with commuters and foreign visitors at the
height of the summer tourism season.
Survivors emerged from subway stations looking dazed, with their faces
blackened by soot. Many of the severely injured were treated on the street
by emergency medical workers before being taken to area hospitals. Scores
of the wounded were seated on the streets wrapped in silver heat blankets
while receiving treatment for shock.
At Tavistock Square in downtown London lay the wreckage of the
bombed-out, red double-decker bus with its roof ripped back like a tin of
sardines.
Simon Thompson, 28, a senior house officer at the National Hospital
for Neurology and Neurosurgery, helped tend to the wounded. He said that as
he entered the subway station at Russell Square, he saw "loads of people
walking around with limbs missing."
"It was like a battlefield," Thompson said.
But there was little in the way of panic, according to witnesses, and
the police and emergency services moved quickly to implement a
well-coordinated and well-rehearsed response.
Michael Feely, 49, a tourist from upstate New York visiting London with
his daughter, his son-in-law, and their three children, said they were
walking toward Tavistock Square when they heard a loud explosion. "We saw
the bus blow up. We saw the debris fly two stories up in the air," Feely
said.
Two Tennessee sisters vacationing in London, Kathleen and Emily
Benton, were among the subway riders injured in the explosions and were
hospitalized, their father said. Dudley Benton told the Associated Press he
had talked to their doctors and was told his daughters would recover.
Britain, which knows terrorism all too intimately after enduring an
Irish Republican Army bombing campaign that became a grim fixture of life
for a generation, had never seen such a devastating terrorist attack on its
own soil. The toll in yesterday's attack surpassed that of the 1998 bombing
in Omagh, Northern Ireland, by an IRA dissident group, which killed 29
people.
Many London residents yesterday were quick to display the same steely
sense of resolve that allowed Britons to endure the German Blitz during
World War II.
Yaron Silberberg, 28, a student at University College, London, comes
from Tel Aviv, where he said he narrowly survived a waterfront cafe bombing
two years ago. "Back home this happens all the time," Silberberg said,
surveying the scene at Russell Square. "Now London reminds me of home."
In Scotland, the British Union Jack flew at half staff over the
Gleneagles Hotel. World leaders, police, and reporters huddled around
televisions to watch coverage of the attacks. Before Blair left to return
to London, he stood flanked by the other seven heads of the world's most
industrialized nations as well as other world leaders and UN Secretary
General Kofi Annan.
In a statement on behalf of all the participants, Blair said the
bombings were "not an attack on one nation but on all nations and on
civilized people everywhere."