London terror bombings kill 37, wound 700
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-07-08 07:21

The first blast caught a subway train between Moorgate and Liverpool Street stations, on the eastern fringe of London's financial district. Seven died, police said. Moorgate is named for one of the gates in the city walls of London, of which few traces remain. Some people caught in the blast emerged from the Aldgate Station, near Jack the Ripper's old haunts in Whitechapel.

A journalist talks on his mobile phone in front of the G8 nation flags flying at half-mast in Gleneagles, site of the annual G8 conference, July 7, 2005. Four blasts tore through packed underground trains and a bus during London's rush hour on Thursday, killing 37 people and disrupting the summit of world leaders in the deadliest-ever peacetime attack on the capital. [Reuters]

The second bombing came five minutes later, on a second train deep underground between the King's Cross and Russell Square stations. Police said 21 died. King's Cross station, in one of the seediest parts of London, is the film setting for Platform 9 3/4 in the Harry Potter films. Russell Square station serves Bloomsbury, the early 20th-century literary hotbed where Virginia Woolf and luminaries lived. The British Museum is a short walk away.

At 9:17 a.m., there was an explosion involving two or perhaps three trains around Edgware Road station. Five people were killed, police said. Edgware Road is the heart of a thriving Arab community, and convenient to Hyde Park, scene of last weekend's Live 8 concert.

The bus explosion took place near Russell Square, an area of many modestly priced hotels popular with tourists and close to the British Museum. Also nearby is the home where Charles Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839.

The explosions shut down a subway and bus system which handles 8.4 million passenger journeys per day, though buses started running again for the evening rush hour.

Stocks sank in Europe and on Wall Street, and the British pound fell to a 19-month low against the U.S. dollar. London's FTSE 100 index fell about 2 percent, or 102.40 points, gaining back half its earlier losses. Germany's DAX fell 1.8 percent and the CAC 40 in Paris was down 1.7 percent.

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