London attacked again!

From Times Online (July 21), "London's day of deja vu" by Simon Freeman:

Two weeks after its worst attack in 50 years, London was getting back to normal.

But today, the capital was today thrown into its worst nightmare with a series of copycat Tube and bus bomb attacks coming exactly a fortnight after the atrocity that claimed 56 lives.

At just before 1pm, the Underground was placed on 'amber' alert and the Hammersmith & City, Victoria and Northern line were evacuated. Roads were closed around three stations. Mobile phone networks went into meltdown.

Scotland Yard was quick to inform a terrified public that the latest series of incidents - on Tubes at the Oval, Warren Street and Shepherd's Bush and a bus in Hackney Road, East London - was not being treated as a major terrorist attack.

Within two hours it became clear that the four co-ordinated attacks were not on the same scale as July 7. The sense of relief was palpable as services on the Tubes began to return to normal.

Continuous updates available on the Counterterrorism Blog.

Elsewhere, a "British LGBT civil rights group says its leaders have received death threats from Muslim fundamentalists and warns that gay clubs could be targets for terrorist bombers" (365gay.com July 18; hat tip Chrenkoff).

Meanwhile, the spooks at DEBKAfile presents a scoop about the first London bombings.

More on the most recent bombings: a timeline of events from CTV.ca; eyewitness reports from This is London (Evening Standard); and everyone's looking for "a black or Asian male, 6 feet 2 inches tall, wearing a blue top with a hole in the back and wires protruding from it" (MSNBC).

update: tscd--"previously from Singapore, currently in the United Kingdom" as she describes herself--gives us her impressions from the point of view of a health care worker in London. Also the earlier posts on the first attacks.