Yesterday’s London bombings - exactly two weeks after the previous which have killed 52 people - failed to kill or injure any Londoners. For that we breathe a huge sigh of relief - but the bombers themselves are now on the run.
The attempts at widespread murder - on three trains and a bus, just as on July 7th - failed because the small explosives that made up the detonators failed to ignite the rest of the explosives in the rucksacks containing the devices.
Witness statements reoprts a man exclaiming out loud when his device failed to go off; a second was seen to flee when his detonator activated. One of the bombers was standing next to a woman and her baby when his detonator went off.
From The Guardian:
Witness said they had heard a sound “like the popping of champagne corks” from a large black rucksack on a train seat, and the carriage had begun to fill with smoke.
When the train pulled into the station a young man next to the bag dashed out of the train and fled into the street.
The driver of the No 26 bus, Mark Maybanks, heard a bang coming from the top deck of his bus. He ordered his passengers off and went upstairs to investigate.
Mr Maybanks, 38, said: “I’ve never been so frightened in my life as when I went up the stairs. After what happened earlier this month I didn’t know what I would find.”
Four bombs, each in a rucksack, have been recovered from each of the scenes.
The trawl through CCTV footage has already begun. Confidence in the ability of the police and security services to catch these four must be sky-high at the moment. After outstanding work in tracking down the last four these four must know the game is up. It’s only a matter of time.
Detectives are assuming these men are part of a bigger team although the possibility is that they are simply copy-cats. However, a security consultant interviewed on television this morning believes there is little chance that, on seeing the bombings of 7 July, anybody could have planned and prepared a replica in just 14 days. He suggests the explosives - which are thought to have come from the same batch as those used on the 7th - failed to detonate simply because they had degraded over the intervening period.
