London Fashion Week Overshadowed by Terrorist Incident
LONDON – An explosive device went off on Friday morning at a London Underground station in West London, the Metropolitan Police Service has confirmed. The incident, in which 22 people were injured, is being treated as a terrorist attack.
Police were called at approximately 8.20 a.m. on Friday, the first day of London Fashion Week, following reports of a fire on the train. Images show the explosive device to be a white bucket with wires emerging from it.
It exploded as the train was pulling into the station during rush hour. Some reports say that a carriage of the train was engulfed in flames, others describe a puff of smoke and a chemical smell.
Passengers were evacuated from the rear of the train onto the tracks at the aboveground station, with witnesses describing a panicked “stampede” down stairs to exit the station.
Dozens of ambulances, fire trucks and police vehicles rushed to the scene. Uniformed and plain-clothes police officers, members of the counter-terrorism command, the British Transport Police, and London Ambulance Service’s Hazardous Area Response Team have been deployed at the station and in surrounding streets.
“It now seems there was a detonation of an improvised explosive device,” said Mark Rowley, assistant commissioner at the Metropolitan Police Service. He said there would be an increased police presence, particularly on transport, during the rest of the day.
Twenty-two people have been taken to hospital, according to Natasha Wills, assistant director of operations at London Ambulance Service. None are thought to be in a serious or life-threatening condition, with most believed to be suffering from burns and injuries caused in the stampede from the station.
There are several schools in the vicinity of the station, and the attack coincided with the time when many children were on their way to school. Residents of the streets surrounding the station have been evacuated to the White Horse pub on Parson’s Green. Police have not said when residents can return to their homes.
Inside, one woman told WWD that she had seen a young boy with grievous injuries to his feet and that her neighbor in one of the apartment blocks at Dairy Close, which overlooks the station, had taken photographs of three men fleeing the station immediately after the attack, running along rooftops to make their escape. The eyewitness was unavailable for comment as police said she had been escorted from the pub for questioning.
Another witness noted that images she had taken of the train had mysteriously vanished from her phone and were no longer accessible to view.
Prime Minister Teresa May is traveling down from her Maidenhead constituency to chair a meeting this afternoon in response to the attack.
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