AGAIN: In London, a bus and three Underground stations were attacked
At the Warren Street tube station on one of the busiest shopping streets in the heart of London, police wearing fluorescent yellow jackets swarmed the station while riders filed out of subway cars to safety above ground. Sofiane Mohellebi, 35, was traveling on the Victoria line when he smelled what he describes as "burning tires and wires" in his car. Mohelleei said that he did not hear anything, and did not see any smoke, but that the smell was overwhelming. He said that people started to panic as soon as they smelt the burning. "I could not figure out why people were panicking," he said, " but I realized that there was no time to think."
Riders started to make their way out of the subway car, and ran into the car ahead of them. Abena Adofo, 23, said she was daydreaming when the door of her car burst open and up to 20 people ran in. People pushed their way to the other side of the train in confusion and someone pulled the passenger alarm. "I was shaky and scared," she said, "but like everyone else, I was trying to get out." According to Adofo, an IT trainer who was heading back home to East London when the incident occurred, even though there was panic, the subway passengers thought of their fellow riders as they tried to leave the station. "People were helping each other," she said.
As always in these kinds of attacks, there was a tremendous amount of confusion, and unexplained incidents. Michelle Sinclair, 24, was eating lunch at a nearby restaurant when the events occurred at Warren Street. When police cordoned off the street she said, she saw a call pull up with two members of the British transport police inside. They went into the station and grabbed a tanned skinned man with shoulder length hair, wearing a backpack and hurried him into the back of the car. According to Sinclair, the man did not struggle as car sped off.
Around the corner from the Warren Street station at University College Hospital, three heavily armed police officers wearing flak jackets and two police officers with bomb sniffing dogs stormed into the emergency room soon after the blasts went off. Police sealed off the 16-story building, amidst rumors that someone had left the site of the explosions and had run into the ER. "I've never seen so many police in my life, running around rapidly with their guns," said one woman. "It was very hectic and we weren't told anything." For the police, the search for answers has already begun.