Below are some accounts of the incident as they were originally reported:
And at 0917 BST an explosion on another Circle Line train coming into Edgware Road underground station blew a hole through a wall onto another train at an adjoining platform.
Three trains were thought to be involved and there were seven confirmed deaths so far, Mr Paddick said.
Seven people were later killed in an explosion at Edgware Road Tube station at 9.17am. Three trains are believed to have been hit.
At 09:17 BST a bomb exploded on another Circle Line train between Edgware Road Station and Paddington. The blast blew a hole in a wall, and another train was hit by debris from it. A third train is also involved. Five are known to be dead.
At 9.17am, seven people died after an explosion ripped through a tunnel wall at Edgware Road station, damaging three trains.
9.17am - Edgware Road stationPolice confirmed five people died after an explosion ripped through an underground train as it was around 100 metres from arriving at Edgware Road station. The blast blew through a wall onto another train on an adjoining platform and in total three trains were affected.
In an attempt to clarify which trains were affected I had contacted the Metropolitan Police but was stonewalled by DI Neil Smith of the anti-terrorist branch at New Scotland Yard.
The MPS website states the following:
Westbound Circle Line train coming into Edgware Road station, approx. 100 yards into the tunnel. The explosion blew a hole through a wall onto another train on an adjoining platform. The device was in the second carriage, in the standing area near the first set of double doors.
I had requested the following information:
The police website states that two trains were involved in the incident on 7th July 2005 at Edgware Road, when the blast tore through a tunnel wall into a train on an adjoining platform. Was anyone injured or killed in this other train?
So I contacted TFL to find out about this train on an adjoining platform and received the following reply:
Thank you for your request, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, dated 5 April 2006 asking for -
* The numbers and lines of the other trains involved at Edgware Rd and whether there were any injuries or deaths on these other trains
I can confirm that, on 7 July 2005, 3 bombs exploded on the following 3 Tube trains:
* Circle line train number 204 heading eastbound from Liverpool Street station to Aldgate station;
* Circle line train number 216 travelling westbound heading from Edgware Road station to Paddington station; and
* Piccadilly line train number 331 travelling from King's Cross St. Pancras to Russell Square westbound.
The number of fatalities from these three incidents was as follows:
* 7 from the Aldgate incident;
* 6 from the Edgware Road incident; and
* 26 from the Kings Cross / Russell Square incident;
In total, four trains were damaged. Three of the trains were those where the explosions took place. A fourth train, a Hammersmith & City line train, at Edgware sustained damage, while passing Circle line train 216 when the device exploded. No fatalities or injuries were recorded on the Hammersmith & City line train.
No mention of tunnel walls or adjoining platforms! Another FOI request was then sent to TFL:
Dear Fola OlafareThe trouble with the 'only passengers on train 216 were injured or fatalities' answer is that it doesn't explain how Jenny Nicholson was killed travelling from Paddington to Edgware Road.
Thank you for your reply to my FOI request ref: 1340405.
I had asked for the number of the other train involved at Edgware Road, which you have kindly informed me was a Hammersmith & City line train.
1. Could you please supply the number of this train.
The Metropolitan Police web site claim the following trains were involved at Edgware Road:
Westbound Circle Line train coming into Edgware Road station, approx. 100 yards into the tunnel. The explosion blew a hole through a wall onto another train on an adjoining platform. The device was in the second carriage, in the standing area near the first set of double doors.
2. Do I understand that this is not correct and that there was no hole blown through a tunnel wall onto a train on an adjoining platform?
Jenny Nicholson, who was 24, was killed by the suicide bomber Mohammed Sidique Khan on the westbound Circle line service she had boarded at Paddington station. She had phoned her boyfriend, James White, minutes earlier.From contact that I have made with a source very close to the incident I have the following:
The media reporting of the Edgware Road incident is very strange. All the TV cameras appeared at the wrong station which was the Bakerloo LIne station. There was reported a wall between the trains. Circle line trains operate in a double track tunnel where there are no walls between tracks or trains. You will not see any photos or videos of the Edgware Road incident either. They were all quickly classed as national security items. This is because of the damage done. The second car from the front having been totally destroyed including taking out the floor.
More questions that need answering are:
1. How did Jenny Nicholson die on an eastbound train between Paddington and Edgware Rd?
2. Why do the MPS claim that the explosion tore through a tunnel wall onto a train on an adjoining platform when there was no tunnel between the trains?
3. Why did early reports claim 3 trains were affected?
4. Why did the original time change from 9.17 to 8.50?
* UPDATE *
There is no tunnel wall at Edgware Rd as the MPS stated in their summary of the explosions. This is the reply I received from TFL:
17/Jul/2006
Dear Miss Dunne
Thank you for your request, under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, asking for -
* The number of the Hammersmith & City line train at Edgware Road that sustained damage
* Whether there was a hole blown through a tunnel wall onto a train on an adjoining platform
I can confirm that the train number was 207 and that, at Edgware Road, there are not separate tunnels for trains heading in opposite directions.
Therefore, no hole was blown through a tunnel wall.
20 comments:
How hard it is to find out the number of Jeff Porter's train! If it was a Circle then its number should be 207 since 206 was ahead of it in Baker Street. But Tfl say it was an H&C train. From the TrackerNet images there was an train in platform 1 at Edgware Road, probably an H&C, number unknown. The train in platform 2 was probably a District Line "Wimbleware" train.
I heard Jenny Nicholson's mother on BBC News 24, "Hard Talk", saying that Jenny was on a train she was not supposed to be on.
Hi Numeral
"Ms Nicholson's parents had been holidaying in Wales at the time of the bombing. Her last known phone call was placed to her father, Gregg, from Paddington station, minutes before the bombing."
source
Hi Bridget
It is hard to find anything beneath the wreckage of lies that the government has left behind. If the train didn't happen to be, what else could it have been? Why are there so many conflicting stories? How could Ms Nicholson have died on a train different from the one bombed, and if she managed to die, then how come nobody else was injured or even killed as well?
Why don't you approach the Russian embassy and ask them if they would be prepared to fund and host a full public inquiry on behalf of the victims of the bombing?
The UK gov would most probably want to reconsider whether or not they should hold one.
I think the Russian people might want to consider investigating their own cycle of poorly investigated terrorist bombings/ government crackdowns before worrying about us
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/448993.stm
I am not sure where this fits in. But here goes anyway. It is possible that JN usually took the Bakerloo from Paddington to Piccadilly Circus since Rheingold Publishing where she worked has an office in Shaftesbury Avenue. But:
"Bakerloo line - suspended between Paddington and Elephant and Castle in both directions from 08:07 due to a defective train in Piccadilly Circus northbound platform. Services resumed with severe delays"
disruptive
It seems to me like Rachel North is adopted as the 'official face of the puclic 7-7 campaign' partly becasue she totally dismisses ALL the evidence (and there is plenty) that in fact the Govt is lying about 7-7. It's my belief that it lies becasue it has played a part in the 7-7 bombings! She was on channel-4 AGAIN the other day.
Rachel, sorry but you dont represent me. YOUR victim status doen't override my status and belief that 7-7 was a government involved operation. Please dont speak on my behalf.
That sinister Peter Power guy was on TV the other day talking about the Newham terror arrests too. Peter was strangely managing a 1000 man anti-terror drill which shared many similiariries to what is officially said to have occured on that day. To me it seemed his 1000 man exercise was the cover up and aid the operation.
I stand to be proved wrong. Lets have a full enquiry which answers ALL questions that point the way to a government conspiracy.
I have thought very hard about how Jenny Nicholson died ever since the news broke. I have not tried to find out as it would obviously look distasteful and I would appear obsessed. However, I feel connected to her because I used to work at Rhinegold Publishing although I never met her as she joined after my time. I also know Paddington commuter arrival location. She could not have been on the WESTBOUND [please note that your re-typed Guardian quote on this website in fact has a mistake in it - it should read 'eastbound', as it does in the link, which is exactly proving the point] Circle line unless she took Hammersmith & City to Edgware Road and then changed there to Westbound and intended to go down to Notting HIll to change for Central line. None of these journeys make much sense for Rhinegold office - the quickest would be, of course, Bakerloo. Everything is obfuscated by the untimely failure of Bakerloo and Northern lines. Many of the victims would not have died if they had been where they would normally be at that time.
Jenny could also have gone east and intended to change for Picadilly line at King's Cross to go to Holborn. ...
Additionally, at 8.45 a.m. the Northern line at my local station in South London was shut and the gates were closed at street level. "They did not know how long it would take". When I took a bus to a train station nearby, trains scheduled King's Cross were delayed already coming to this far-away station from the south, and the reason given was "power failures in the King's Cross area". This is the Thames link train. This was slightly before 9.50...
Eventually I went to Waterloo on another train. The rest we know.
@ Anonymous
Your comment is appreciated and I realise how difficult it is to write about Jenny or any of the victims of that day. It is as much for their sakes that the truth must be discovered. It was just that her journey has never made sense. I've checked the Guardian quote and it has changed from the original (which did say westbound from Paddington interestingly).
I wrote to the Guardian back in March:
"To: reader@guardian.co.uk
Sent: Thursday, March 09, 2006 3:49 PM
Subject: Article in The Guardian 7/3/06
Dear Sir
This article in Tuesday's Guardian:
Vicar who cannot forgive tube bombers quits pulpit
Sam Jones
Tuesday March 7, 2006
The Guardian
states the following:
"Jenny Nicholson, who was 24, was killed by the suicide bomber Mohammed
Sidique Khan on the westbound Circle line service she had boarded at
Paddington station. She had phoned her boyfriend, James White, minutes
earlier."
Yet the Circle Line would have to travel eastbound between Paddington and
Edgware Road, and given that we are told that it was the westbound train
that exploded, I cannot make sense of how this young woman can have been
killed by Mr Khan on July 7th,
Could you please check if you have given the correct information,"
I never received a reply but presumably they just changed the story, which means it makes less sense now as you say.
There was a problem on the Northern line from Balham (which includes Stockwell & Oval interestingly) reported much earlier that morning. Perhaps a FOI request to TFL asking what this delay was may be worthwhile.
I have just sent the following to the Guardian:
"Dear Sir
I wrote to you back in March (copies included) about an article entitled:
Vicar who cannot forgive tube bombers quits pulpit which appeared in the Guardian on 7/3/06. I never receieved a reply from the news editor or the reporter but I notice that the article has changed from the original which stated:
on the westbound Circle line service she had boarded at Paddington station
to this:
on the eastbound Circle line service she had boarded at Paddington station
Guardian
By changing the direction from west to east still does not put Jenny Nicholson on the train that we are told Mohammed Sidique Khan exploded a bomb on.
I have also checked with TFL and there were no injuries or deaths on the train that was travelling east from Paddington which was affected by the westbound train that had just left Edgware Rd.
This account of Jenny Nicholson's death still fails to make sense and remains inaccurate despite the article being changed,"
It is shocking that journalists do not appear to be investigating all the anomalies and inaccuracies that surround 7th July.
I've received the following reply from the Guardian to the email above:
Dear Bridget Dunne,
Thank you for your latest email on the death of Jennifer Nicholson in the July 7 bombings last year. The readers' editor, Ian Mayes, passed it to me so that a fresh pair of eyes could address your concern.
You say that TfL said there were no injuries or deaths on the eastbound train.
What is not in dispute is that Ms Nicholson was one of the six killed by the suicide bomber's blast near Edgware Road station. We, along with other national papers reported her death at the time without mentioning the details of the train on which she travelled.
Much information is partial and confused at the time of a horrific event of this scale. We attempt to assemble the story as accurately as possible in the circumstances. Remember also that it was five days before Ms Nicholson's body was identified.
The other certainty is that she made a call to her father or her boyfriend (both are mentioned in different reports) and that was traced to Paddington.
Only the Camden New Journal of July 15 has, so far as I can discover, stated categorically that, "Her tube carriage was going in the opposite direction to the train in which the bomber was travelling".
We later reported, on the occasion of her mother's statement in March this year, that she had been travelling west, which was the information we were given. You pointed out that she must have been travelling east and the reporter concerned confirmed that there had been a mistake in the original information.
Most of this sort of detailed information has been uncovered by the authorities concerned and subsequently passed on to the media. We then report what we receive in good faith. Perhaps TfL has the wrong information? Perhaps the coroner has more information?
We cannot solve these murders; we can only try to make sure that the correct information, so far as we can establish it, is in the public domain.
May I encourage you to draw the discrepancies you point to about the death of Jennifer Nicholson to the attention of the Metropolitan police or the coroner's office.
Yours sincerely,
Murray Armstrong,
Associate editor.
Hi Bridget
Here is one possible scenario. JN gets to Paddington but finds that there are delays on the Bakerloo which she usually gets to Piccadilly Circus. She thinks about getting a Circle to Notting Hill Gate to pick up the Central Line to Tottenham Court Road. But she makes a mistake and takes a train to Edgware Road instead. There she gets off and takes train 216 back.
Do you know what time she called from Paddington. Was it about 0830?
Hi Numeral
The nearest I can get to establishing the time is this:
Minutes before her death she called her boyfriend from Paddington to tell him that she was late for work and was on the westbound Circle Line train.
The Times
If she was late for work wouldn't it have made more sense to stay on the train and change at Baker Street rather than go to Edgware Rd and then go back to Notting Hill? Wouldn't that take more than minutes? I don't know.
I wonder if anonymous can let me know which station is nearest to Rhinegold Publishing, is it Tottenham Ct Rd?
Sorry this was the link to The Times story that I missed out in the above post:
The Times
Bridget,
I have replied re JN but my post seems to have disappeared. Just in case, I will reiterate the information you wanted: Tottenham Court Road is the nearest, but Holborn on Picadilly or even Euston Square on H & C and circle would be possible.
Hi, Bridget, again,
see above for the information re stations nearest to Rhinegold Publishing premises.
I have also seen this via google:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/08/nbomb308.xml
I wonder if the victim on the eastbound train was JN.
I have remembered one more thing which I keep coming back to - and then I must take a break from this as my life is going through flux and I am getting too upset reading everyone's comments etc. I will be back later this summer.
I arrived at work late that morning, having gone to Waterloo by train (as described in my first posting). The suspicious delays of Thames link northbound to King's X aside, completely ignorant of the true extent of the disaster, I arrived in my workplace. I chanced on a phone call made from inside the BMA in Tavistock Square. A dictor of BMA member was leaving a message for my boss "not to call him, he would call him himself later on...they had a meeting or a conference that morning...now with the [already known via Internet etc] bombs, he was concerned he would not get to Liverpool ST to take his train home...on top of everything, the police had told them not to leave the premises..."
I said politely that I would pass the message on and hoped everything would be allright for him. When the news broke of the bus explosion (I guess we got it off the internet to shich we were by then glued), I said ohmigod, the man was calling right from Tavistick Square and he never let on. My boss said patronisingly, "and quite right too, he did not want to spread panic" [he meant, this is what a real man would do]. Since then, I have realised this was not the case. A BMA member, a doctor, would not be maing a call to this company, which was trying to sell him their product, to way "don't call me, I'll call you" once they began tending to the victims. What a preposterous idea! And if he was trying to let the outside world know something had happened in Tavistock Square, he would not have chosen this small company to break the news via such a dippy, unrevealing call. I believe he was calling before the bus explosion. I will never know the exact time. I wonder if it is significant that the police had time (see another remark on this blog - how come they got to TS so quickly?)to imprison the BMA staff and visitors in the premises instead of letting them go or even evacuating them. Did they think they would need them later? Were they protecting them from something?
Anyway, I wanted to share this in the same way I shared the mystery of JN's route. You will know what to do with it, Bridget.
I can no longer verify any of this as I (thank god) no longer work for that company.
It would be nice to think that there are many more people who know something, they just don't think it is significant.
Take care.
To correct one of many typos above, to prevent miunderstanding:
where it ways "dictor of BMA member", this should, of course, be "doctor or BMA member".
Anonymous
Thanks you so much for posting the above, may I suggest you can also email me via my profile if you don't wish to publicly state the name of the company you worked for.
I couldn't get to the Telegraph link that you posted sometimes they are too long for blogger, perhaps you could repost it.
You say you don't remember the time of the call. Can I ask what time did you get to work that morning?
I agree with you about people thinking that small fragments which they think are insignificant can in fact be very important, especially if they somehow don't fit into the picture we are being told to believe. I guess a story like this depends on people not thinking that their particular piece of information is important especially as it is nearly impossible to 'reveal' this information or find a forum to alert people to it. I wonder how many other people are walking around trying to fit a small piece of the jigsaw into the larger picture?
Well done for having the courage to post your concerns over JN's journey and the call from the BMA doctor, I admire your integrity.
Bridget,
the Telegraph link again:
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/07/08/nbomb308.xml
It worked for me just now in a separate Explorer window. Try pasting it as one lot after http:// in your browser line. Alternatively, it comes up on Yahoo search under Edgware Road explosion , UK search, not very far from your link. It is the Telegraph webpage dated 8/7.
My journey to work: train to Waterloo on which I got on instead of the closed Northern Line must have left my South London station a bit after nine. I then needed to find a way to the office, which is in Borough High Street. I had only just started with the company the preceding Monday and had never travelled via this route before. At Waterloo I could already see the Jubilee line closed with metal gates. So it must have been after the "amber alert" or whatever. But no news amongst the public - except I overheard somebody on their mobile (!) - still...? saying "and is it a bomb...?" - which tragically I did not take seriously as it sounded like someone was having a conversation about a tube security alert shutdown. The street outside Waterloo was packed with people waiting for buses and taxis looking like they were merely trying to get to work. Many on mobiles. I could not be bothered to call my employer. In fact, I began to see that my lateness was somehow unavoidable and so I was off the hook.
Having previously intended to take the Jubilee Line to London Bridge, I now had to walk. I tried guessing the directions to Borough and walked along the Cut and popped into an independent bookshop on my way. The owner of the bookshop did not look like he had yet any idea anything had happened.
I found my way to Borough High Street and burst into the office at, probably, 10.15 at the earliest. The others had told me the news and I then must have looked on the internet, possibly went to the kitchen and the loo - both on a different floor so at least 10 minutes more. The call from BMA could then have happened anytime between, say, 10.25 and right up to 10.40. Certainly not before 10.25. We then must have later become aware of the bus blast as the news broke online, same as everyone else.
I hope this helps.
I am not particularly reluctant to reveal the company name, after all I have already admitted I had worked at Rhinegold and that's how I started searching for news about JN. It's just that at this company they are not nice people and I certainly do not believe they would cooperate with anyone. The world of media sales is a funny one. All the more tragic that Jenny Nicholson died prematurely before going on to a better kind of a job as befitted her degrees...
Tragically it has become clearer today from various reports and survivor accounts (Evening Standard, for instance) that Jenny was the one thrown out of a train -even that it probably was an eastbound train. But why is this not out in the open that a second train was damaged?
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