Casualties of the 7 July 2005 London bombings
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The 7 July 2005 London bombings killed 52 people in addition to the four bombers. About 700 people were injured; some 350 were treated on the scene, and 350 in hospital. 100 required overnight hospitalisation or more. 22 were seriously or critically injured[1]. For a full list of the victims see here, or for an external link including images of the victims, follow the link[2].
The breakdown of deaths by location is as follows:[3]
- 7 at Aldgate
- 6 at Edgware Road
- 26 at Russell Square
- 13 on the bus at Tavistock Square
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom Tony Blair announced on July 10, 2005 that family liaison officers had been assigned to some 74 families.
At least 90 injuries were reported from Aldgate Station. Ninety-five of the injured were taken to the Royal London Hospital where they were treated; 17 were in critical condition. Many others were treated at St Mary's Hospital, Paddington. Individuals who were wounded and walking were treated at the scene; an eyewitness reported that they were "operating on injured people on the concourse at Liverpool Street station" (see [4]).
Paramedics were sent down into the tube system to search for more casualties. St. John Ambulance and the British Red Cross was called out to assist the London Ambulance Service ([5]), and hospitals had to call in off-duty staff, plus doctors from as far afield as Hampshire and Oxfordshire. The ticket hall and waiting area of King's Cross station was used as a temporary hospital for the victims of the Piccadilly Line explosion. Air ambulances were used extensively to provide rapid transportation of specialist medics to the scenes of the explosions. A number of London buses were also used to transport the "walking wounded" to hospital.
Many of the casualties (dead and injured) were foreign nationals, including people from Sierra Leone, Australia, Bangladesh, South Africa, Colombia, Poland, Romania, New Zealand, Israel, Iran, Mauritius, Turkey, Afghanistan and China. The first fatality to be formally identified was Susan Levy, 53, of Newgate Street Village. There were some difficulties when medical personnel needed to communicate with non-English speakers.
The retrieval of bodies from the Piccadilly Line tunnel was hampered by dangerous conditions, including asbestos, rats and temperatures that reached 60° Celsius (140° Fahrenheit). Because it is a single-line tunnel, there was little room for workers to pass on the outside of the train, therefore they had to work their way through the wreckage, or approach it the long way along the tunnel from Russell Square. There were initial concerns that the deep tunnel might have become unstable, although in fact there was no long-term damage to tunnels at any of the sites.
The four bombers died in the explosions: the attacks are the first suicide bombings in the history of the UK (see[6]).
