Aftermath in the capital: A city's celebrations turned to sorrow as attack ends London's Olympics party, write Frederick Studemann and Gary Silverman
What was set to be a day of joy became a day of sorrow.
London was still basking in its surprise victory in the race to host the 2012 Olympics. Then yesterday morning, "everything went black", said Rachel McFadyen, a commuter injured in the blast in the underground tunnels below King's Cross station.
"The train was full of broken glass and smoke. It was so black it was like having velvet put over your eyes, and you couldn't breathe because the air was full of smoke and rubber and dust," she said.
"People's faces were so black you couldn't really see how badly they were injured. They were black as if they had come out of a coalmine."
Less than 24 hours before, cheering Londoners had been dancing in the streets as jets marked the Olympic triumph with a fly-past. Yesterday morning, the prevailing sound was of sirens piercing an eerie silence as the occasional emergency helicopter swept its way through the drizzle.
Raj Mattoo, a 35-year-old support manager for a charity, was on board the number 91 bus when he saw a bus coming in the opposite direction.
"All of a sudden the roof of the approaching bus was blown five metres into the air," Mr Mattoo said.
"People on my bus were in complete shock and were panicking but they evacuated the bus in an orderly fashion within 30 seconds."
For most other Londoners, the first they knew of the attacks was when they were turned away from Underground stations, shut in response to what staff euphemistically termed a "network emergency", or ordered off buses that were going into the centre of town.
Left to continue their journeys by foot, many reached for their mobile phones - only to find they would not work due to overloaded networks.
In the City of London, close to where one of the bombs struck, bank employees reported seeing casualties on the street outside Aldgate East Underground station.
Elsewhere, the sense of the extraordinary was mixed with a seemingly dogged determination to carry on as usual. In the foyer of the London Chamber of Commerce, anxious office workers crowded around a television, while in nearby sandwich bars people formed orderly queues at the tills as if it were any other day.
Amid the shock was a sense of inevitability. Alex Cameron, a barrister who was in Southwark Crown Court when the blasts happened, said: "I am surprised it didn't happen earlier." The daily trudge home of city commuters over London Bridge began early as people left work and went in search of transport back to the suburbs and home counties.
Some banks were quick to snap up hotel rooms to ensure that key staff would be able to get to work this morning.
But throughout, a certain quiet stoicism evoked memories of previous onslaughts on Britain's capital. A Lloyd's insurance broker, returning home to Beckenham in Kent, promised to be back at his desk on Friday morning. "Don't let the buggers beat us."
Also making his way home, a man with a Northern Irish accent reassured his mother by phone that he was safe: "It's a big area, Mum, a big area."