Bunches of flowers and an array of candles sat above London's "Underground Zero" site yesterday, where deep beneath the earth the twisted wreckage of a train lay buried with up to 20 bodies still onboard.
The train, some 30m beneath the ground between King's Cross and Russell Square stations, north London, was ripped apart in the deadliest of four bomb blasts against the Underground network and a bus three days earlier.
More than 50 people were killed in the co-ordinated, rush hour attacks but police are unable to give a final death toll until all remains are retrieved.
PHOTO: AP
In a chilling echo of the scenes after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the US, the relatives and friends of those who vanished on Thursday have created a painful patchwork of photographs and messages appealing for information outside an entrance to King's Cross station.
Similar messages are also assembled down the road at Russell Square, which is closed to the public while rescue workers and forensic experts delve for the dead as well as for clues that might lead them to the culprits.
High walls of plastic sheeting shroud the grisly task underway as police and firemen struggle to reach the front carriage of the train, where the bomb exploded, which is jammed hundreds of meters down the track, in temperatures reaching 60?C and amid rats, dust and possibly asbestos.
Little is known about the conditions onboard at the moment, but Sergeant Steve Betts of the British Transport Police paints a graphic picture of the horror he witnessed immediately after the blast.
"I got into the train and it was quite obvious that this was something horrendous," he told the Guardian newspaper on Saturday.
"There were people with limbs missing, huge open wounds with their organs showing and people were crying out and moaning and asking for help," he said.
"We had to climb over bodies and body parts to try to help people and see who was still alive. I thought, this is the end of the world right here in this carriage, but you have to do your job," Betts added.
Betts described finding a man with his leg blown off at the knee lying next to what he initially thought to be a pile of clothes.
"As I passed to try and get to the man, it moaned to me and asked for help. It was a woman. She had all her limbs blown off. I think she died on the concourse," he said.
This was the suffering witnessed even before he reached the carriage where the bomb had exploded, bringing down the roof.
"That was a scene I cannot describe," said Betts.
"There were body parts everywhere, there was not one bit as far as I could see that was not covered with organs or blood or bits of body."
Unlike in the attacks against the World Trade Center in New York, which created the original "Ground Zero," the London bombings -- with the exception of the double-decker bus -- took place in the bowels of the earth.
This hid any hellish pictures of death from the public and left a much more serene scene above the ground, where a make-shift shrine of flowers, candles and posters -- offering words of condolence -- decorates a wall of King's Cross station behind a wire fence, where mourners and the curious stop and stare.
"I just wanted to show my support for the poor people who have suffered," said Mavi Osman, 24, an unemployed graduate as she placed a poster at the site that read, "Our love and prayers are with you."
Nearby, a Japanese tourist was snapping photographs.
"I came here yesterday and saw the flowers and wanted to return to see if there would be more or less," said Toshimitzu Kubodera, a 22-year-old student.
"If there had been less that would mean people were forgetting the victims, but I see that the pile is growing so people must still remember," he said.
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