London Falls Silent to Defy Terror, Grieve for Victims

United in a grief for which words seem insufficient, Londoners summoned by 12 mournful strikes of the Big Ben clock tower flooded streets and sidewalks in silent defiance of the terror that gripped their city a week earlier.

So thorough was the hush that fell over this ever-clamorous capital at noon Thursday that birdsong and leaves rustling in a gentle wind were all that could be heard for 120 seconds after the bells tolled.

The normally frenetic Thames Embankment and Knightsbridge retail district looked like still photos. The city’s 6,000 red double-decker buses and shiny black taxis, as well as cars, trucks and motorbikes, pulled to the curb where drivers shut off their engines.

From ethnic Brick Lane to the lawn of Buckingham Palace, Britons and visitors turned their thoughts from investigators’ pursuit of the perpetrators to the loss of dozens of lives at the hands of fanatics.

“It’s a very sad day, but it’s also an important day because we have shown that we are together,” said Peter Moore, London’s town crier, after stilling his own voice and footsteps alongside thousands of others in Parliament Square, usually a scene of bedlam at lunchtime.

“They will never succeed, these people,” the 63-year-old in red livery said of the attackers who July 7 struck three Underground trains and a packed bus in the first suicide bombings in Western Europe. “We will press on regardless. We went through the war, and we’ll get through this.”

A block north, across from Prime Minister Tony Blair’s offices at 10 Downing Street, clerks and lawmakers and ministers vacated their offices, flooding sidewalks usually frequented at that hour by smokers only. A lengthening vapor trail from a jetliner miles overhead was the only visible motion.

“It was important to take a moment,” Liz Foster, a civil servant at the Department of Health’s Richmond House office building, said after the two-minute silence ended. “It’s not a happy event, but hopefully it will be of some comfort to the families and friends of the victims that we Londoners are thinking about them.”

The hectic bustle of the city’s fabled shopping streets came to a halt during the silence. Moments earlier, customers and salesclerks had filed out of Harrods department store as if taking part in an evacuation. When a few cars failed to heed the standstill in its initial seconds, crowds moved from the sidewalks into the traffic lanes to shame the errant drivers into stopping what they viewed as disrespectful behavior.

Queen Elizabeth II, in a peach chiffon dress, stood in solemn solidarity with her subjects, inside the gates of Buckingham Palace. Blair recessed a meeting with uniformed police in the garden of his official residence to stand at attention. Mayor Ken Livingstone, whose determined, sleeves-up response to the attacks has drawn comparison with former New York Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, led Londoners in their declaration to move forward without fear.

“London will remember all of those who died last Thursday and show its defiance of those who try to change the character of our city through terror,” he said before the silent tribute, which was held throughout Britain. The mayor placed a wreath at King’s Cross Station, where authorities say the bombers met just before setting off for their targets. The gates surrounding the station have become altars piled with flowers and messages of condolence, as have the attack scenes at Edgware Road Station and at Tavistock Square, where the No. 30 bus exploded.

Appearing at the same ceremony as Livingstone, the driver of the bus in which 13 passengers died and dozens of others were wounded spoke for the victims.

“In today’s silence we remember them. With quiet dignity and respect, we show our deep contempt for those who planted the bombs and those who masterminded them,” said George Psaradakis, who was blown from his seat but returned to help extricate the wounded. “As we stand together in silence, let us send a message to the terrorists: You will not defeat us. You will not break us.”

At the Stratford Street mosque in the northern city of Leeds, where the suspected bombers are thought to have planned their attacks unbeknownst to their predominantly Muslim neighbors, Imam Munir Shah stressed that his faith rejects violence and fanatics.

“We condemn these terrorists and what they have done,” the imam told hundreds gathered outside the mosque to observe the two-minute silence. “We refuse to call them Muslims. They are not. Islam does not agree or teach about the killing of innocent people.”

The reflective standstill and a 6 p.m. vigil that drew tens of thousands to Trafalgar Square were replete with the stiff-upper-lip approach taken by this country after previous attacks.

Kirsty Hart, an intensive-care nurse at a children’s hospital near Russell Square who tended adult victims brought there after the blast at King’s Cross Station, voiced what has become a battle cry against extremism.

“We’ve been bombed by the IRA and we were bombed in World War II, and it didn’t make a difference,” the 26-year-old said. “I don’t understand why they [terrorists] think this will change us. If anything, it will make us all the more determined to hold together.”

The noon silence kicked off a spree of memorial services, benefit concerts and rallies that will run through the weekend. The tributes spread around the world.

In Paris, French revelers stilled their celebrations of Bastille Day to join in the two-minute reflection. In Madrid, where 191 died in a terrorist attack on commuter trains on March 11, 2004, Mayor Alberto Ruiz Gallardon presided over a moment of silence outside his town hall.

In the Italian Alps, Pope Benedict XVI prayed for the victims at his vacation retreat, the Vatican reported. And on the other side of the world, on the Indonesian island resort of Bali -- scene of deadly nightclub bombings in 2002 -- a candlelight prayer ceremony coincided with London’s silence.

“Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones last week,” New York Gov. George E. Pataki said on behalf of his state, where nearly 2,800 died in the Sept. 11 attacks. Thousands of foreign travelers joined or were caught up in the memorial observations. London’s Heathrow Airport suspended air traffic while its 70,000 staffers and as many passengers stood silent.

At the 134th British Open in St. Andrews, Scotland, Tiger Woods and other golfers halted at an air horn’s signal and bowed their heads.

Near Green Park in London, a South Korean tour group that had arrived early Thursday morning shouldered cameras and looked on with sympathy as joggers, dog walkers and picnickers came to a halt.

“Their goal was that we should turn on each other, like animals trapped in a cage,” Livingstone said to the crowd filling Trafalgar Square. “They failed. They failed utterly.”