Bombs Rip Rail Stations in London

Central London was plunged into daylong transport chaos Monday when rail and subway services were drastically curtailed after two explosions in railroad stations killed one man and injured 43 others.

Later, the Irish Republican Army in an unsubstantiated telephone message claimed responsibility for the blasts--in what was the IRA’s first major attack against obviously civilian targets since the bombing of Harrods department store in 1983, which killed six people.

On Monday afternoon, London’s Heathrow Airport ordered its four terminals evacuated after receiving a bomb threat by a caller with an Irish accent--further disrupting movement in Britain’s capital. No explosions occurred, and after more than two hours the airport was reopened.

Monday evening, Whitehall, the main government street in London, was emptied and blocked off to traffic when police reported another bomb threat--in the same area where a makeshift mortar attack was launched against the prime minister’s office-residence 11 days ago.

This added even more to the gridlock in central London during the evening rush hour. And it highlighted the problem of shutting down passenger terminals, stations and busy avenues because of bomb phone calls that are possibly hoaxes.

Home Minister Kenneth Baker declared of the Monday bombings, “I am appalled and disgusted by this vicious attack on utterly innocent people going to their work. This is the act of murderous criminals.”

Baker said the bomb at Victoria Station, which went off at 7:46 a.m., was deliberately timed to cause the maximum number of casualties at a terminal used by 213,000 commuters daily.

Police sources said that they had received a message 40 minutes before the Victoria blast warning that all of London’s 14 mainline railroad stations would be bombed, but that the warning was too vague and too late to shut off all passenger stations on a rush-hour morning.

The subsequent shutdown was the first time London railway stations had ever been closed because of the threat of attack. The services ran during the World War II bombing blitz and the later IRA civilian bombing campaign of the early 1970s.

All the casualties Monday occurred at Victoria Station in the heart of London, which serves the south of England. An earlier bomb exploded at Paddington Station, the main terminal for trains to the west of England.

The Victoria explosive was apparently set off in a wastebasket.

After the attack, all rail traffic--carrying hundreds of thousands of Monday morning commuters into London as well as long-distance travelers--was shut down.

London officials said at least 1,000 trains were stopped, stranding more than 500,000 passengers--with another 500,000 subway and bus passengers halted.

Subway trains kept running but they were instructed to skip all station-stops that are connected to London’s mainline rail stations, all of which added to the traffic and commuter confusion.

Many commuters, faced with the uncertainty of getting to destinations, turned around and went home.

The bomb at Victoria Station exploded shortly before 8 a.m. next to public telephones and a self-service ticket machine at the end of two of the station’s 19 track platforms.

Three hours earlier, another bomb tore into the roof of Paddington Station but inflicted no injuries.

After the blasts, British rail trains heading for the capital were ordered to stop and passengers were ordered to “go back home if possible.”

British Rail Chairman Sir Bob Reid visited Paddington and said later, “There are a number of evil forces operating in our country. What they want to do is to disrupt us--but this country has to go on operating because that’s what we are made of.”

One commuter, 23-year-old Jeremy Rose, said of the Victoria blast, “It was very crowded. It was the busiest time of the day. They knew that when they put it there. A lot of people looked like they’d been through a car windshield. A lot of ladies were crying; a lot of people were shouting.

“There was a lot of glass, a lot of confusion, a lot of panic. It was the biggest bang I’ve ever heard in my life.

“There was a guy with one side of his face horrifically cut.”

Martin Egan, who was on the platform when the bomb exploded, said, “As we heard the bomb, we turned around and I saw a flash of flame. I got debris over my face and I could feel the building shake.

“There was a lot of screaming. There were four girls standing beside it when it went off; then there were four bodies on the ground.”

Keith Williams, a paramedic who treated the injured at Victoria, said, “When I got there, all the people seemed very shocked. They were moaning and groaning. There were eight or nine of them scattered on the platform by the (telephones) and there were flowers everywhere scattered from the flower stall.

“A woman kept shouting for her husband. She was in deep shock. I set up a (intravenous) drip for her and moved onto the next victim.”

One of the injured women reportedly lost a foot at the scene.

Outside Victoria Station, an estimated 1,000 people stood behind an area cordoned off by police as casualties were placed in ambulances.

Guests at the adjacent Grosevenor Hotel were transferred to a hotel farther from the station in case of secondary bombs.

Two of these were Americans from Milwaukee, John and Laurie van Handel.

“Family and friends told us not to come, but if you worried about that sort of thing you’d never do anything,” Laurie van Handel said. “We’ve had a nice time and it’s been nice being one of the few so-called brave Yanks to come here.”