Three London subway stations were evacuated on Thursday following a number of unspecified ”incidents”, police said, as witnesses reported panic and screaming in the underground system.
Scotland Yard said emergency services responded to an ”incident” on a bus in Hackney Road, on a junction near Colombia Road, east London.
One person was injured at one of the three subway stations, police said.
”We have one injury in Warren Street so far,” said a spokesperson for the London transport police.
Services on the Victoria and Northern underground lines were suspended.
Scotland Yard said it is not treating the series of incidents as seriously as the attacks two weeks ago, but added that the situation could yet develop.
”I was in the carriage and we smelled smoke — it was like something was burning,” said Sosiane Mohellavi (35), who was travelling from Oxford Circus to Walthamstow when she was evacuated from a train at Warren Street.
”Everyone was panicked and people were screaming. We had to pull the alarm. I am still shaking,” she told Britain’s domestic Press Association.
”We pulled into Warren Street and were evacuated. It was horrible,” she said.
The Guardian reported Victoria Line passenger Ivan McCracken as saying a traveller’s rucksack had exploded on the Tube outside Warren Street station.
He told Sky News: ”I was in a middle carriage and the train was not far short of Warren Street station when suddenly the door between my carriage and the next one burst open and dozens of people started rushing through. Some were falling; there was mass panic.
”It was difficult to get the story from any of them what had happened, but when I got to ground level there was an Italian young man comforting an Italian girl who told me he had seen what had happened.
”He said that a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack.
”The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point, everyone rushed from the carriage,” The Guardian quoted McCracken as saying.
A Sky reporter at the scene of one of the stations reported seeing dozens of fire engines and police vehicles. There were also reports that buildings around Oval station had been evacuated.
The incidents come exactly two weeks after bomb attacks targeting three underground trains and a bus in London killed 56 people, including four suicide bombers. — Sapa-AFP, Sapa-AP, AFP