Survivors tell of their ordeals

The Prince of Wales paid tribute to the strong spirit of the British as he talked to the wounded in hospital.

He said: "It's been one of the things that many of us have dreaded for a long time and now they have finally got through.

"What I can never get over is the resilience of the British people who have set us all a fantastic example of how to recover."

The Prince told one patient who was leaving Edgware Road station at the time of the explosion: "It's always one's dread, isn't it, on the Tube?"

Cynthia Bobb-Semple, 43, from Walthamstow, east London, told him: "I think I'm still a bit shocked. We had just pulled out of Edgware Road and the next thing, it was chaos.

"I'm still picking pieces of glass out."

The Prince said he thought he might have seen the patient on TV and joked: "I hope asking you all these silly questions won't put you back too much."

One member of St Mary's Hospital staff told the Prince of Wales they were "inundated" with people offering to work.

Andrew Meyer, who was one of the first at the Edgware Road blast scene, told the Prince: "Eleven years of service, I've never had a day like it. The training kicked in for everyone."

He told the Duchess of Cornwall: "The patients that were alive were so brave... not screaming. They waited their turn." Camilla replied: "It was very sort of British, wasn't it?"

She told other members of staff: "Thank you all very much indeed... you did a brilliant job."

The Prince of Wales said to one nurse: "You're not too frayed around the edges? It's amazing."

Meanwhile, police chiefs admitted there could be many more bodies still on the Underground. Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Ian Blair said: "There is great difficulty in deciding or determining how many fatalities because two of the scenes are very difficult in terms of recovery.

"One is the bus because of the nature of the explosion and more acutely the Tube train at Russell Square continues to hold a number of bodies. "We don't know how many are there."

He added the attacks, the worst onBritish soil since the Second World War, bore all the hallmarks of an Al-Qaida operation.

Sir Ian confirmed 700 had been injured, with 350 taken to hospital, when four bombs ripped through London's packed transport system.

Of those, 22 were still in a critical condition and one person had died in hospital.

The commissioner said the casualty bureau had already received 104,000 calls.

Anti-terrorist branch head Andy Hayman said each of the bombs contained less than 10lbs of high explosives and they were probably placed on the floor of the three Tube trains or, in the case of the bus, on the floor or a seat.

Sir Ian said it was open to question whether the terror cell responsible for the attack was still in the UK.

But he added: "We must remain vigilant."

Muslim clerics also condemned the attacks.

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, Secretary-General of the Muslim Council of Britain, said: "Our faith of Islam calls upon us to be upholders of justice. The day after London was bloodied by terrorists finds us determined to help secure this justice for the innocent victims of yesterday's carnage.

"The terrorists may have thought they could divide us and make us panic. It is our hope that we will all prove them conclusively wrong."

Stories from survivors of the outrages continued to unfold today.

A former fireman who gave first aid to victims of the Underground explosion between King's Cross and Russell Square said he was "not a hero".

Paul Dadge, 28, a project manager for telecoms firm AOL, who comes from Cannock, Staffordshire, was photographed helping a woman whose face was covered by a surgical mask to protect her burns.

Mr Dadge, a former fireman, said: "The woman I was photographed helping was called Davina. I believe she was 28. But she was one of a number of people I tried to help.

"I was probably with Davina for about five minutes.

"I just basically tried to carry out basic triage to assess their injuries.

"I was trained in first aid when I was in the fire service but to be honest I think it was instinct more than training that took over.

"I am not a hero, not at all. I just happened to be on the spot and I did what I could to help."

The mobile phone belonging to a missing man was found among the debris of yesterday's bus explosion, his colleagues said today.

Friends of Jamie Gordon have launched a desperate campaign for news of his whereabouts.

Colleagues at City Asset Management, based in Old Street, said the administration assistant had called his office to let them know he was travelling to work on board the bus but he has not been heard of since.

Mark Margolis, 29, a project manager for a software firm, said he was travelling to work between King's Cross and Russell Square when the train he was on exploded.

He said: "I was at the front of the first carriage of the Tube, five or six feet from the driver. I was one of the first ten people who got out.

"There was an explosion. There was a lot of screaming behind me. Everything went black.

"Because everything went dark I didn't see what was happening. People were saying 'I am going to die'.

"The driver was trying to get control of the situation and to keep us calm but people couldn't hear because there was so much screaming. He eventually got us off the train and guided us along the tunnel. He was saying 'Don't touch that wire, don't touch that rail' because he was worried they were live.

"I was very lucky I wasn't too badly injured. I have cuts on my face.

"I just hope people don't go and blame particular races or religions.

"The people who did this are evil people. They don't have an agenda. They are just evil."

As the security services launched a massive hunt for the terrorists and continued investigations at the bomb sites, thousands of workers stayed at home.

Rush-hour trains, normally packed with commuters, were half-empty and major stations were almost deserted.

Tubes and buses in the capital were also much quieter than usual even though services were returning to normal.

Industry leaders had urged people to return to work today so the capital could recover as quickly as possible.

But many workers decided they could not face the journey into London and took the day off.

Streets surrounding the bus explosion, close to Woburn Square and Tavistock Place, were still sealed off, with dozens of police officers on guard duty.

Russell Square was unnaturally quiet, stripped of traffic by the security measures.

But defiant Londoners returned to the Tube and the buses, determined to carry on with their lives.

Commuters packed themselves back on board the number 30 bus this morning - a day after it delivered a devastating cargo into the heart of London.

The original bus destroyed in the bomb attacks was today screened off while police carried out forensic tests.

Though some passengers admitted trepidation and others nervously eyed fellow travellers and their luggage, most were simply glad of a means to travel to the city centre and return to some sense of normality.

Network Rail worker Gary Hoffman, 52, who was among the first to embark on a bus near Marble Arch at 6.30am, said: "I'm not nervous at all about coming on this particular bus. We have to get into work and it looks as though the situation is under control."

As the capital prepared to mark the 60th anniversary of the end of Second World War this weekend, there was the same resolve that life would go on whatever the terrorists had hoped to achieve.

Home Secretary Charles Clarke said all efforts were being concentrated on catching the bombers to stop them striking again.

He said: "The number one purpose today is to identify the perpetrators and arrest them because there is obviously a danger if there is a group that has committed these attacks not brought to justice and therefore able to continue thinking about carrying out further attacks.

"That is the number one preoccupation the police and security services have at this moment.

He said the Government was taking seriously a claim on a web site from an Al-Qaida group that it was responsible.

The Home Secretary defended the decision to lower the level of security threat in the capital before the attacks, saying that all the security services thought the risk had got "slightly lower".

He said: "Obviously it was wrong. We have looked very carefully at the threat we are now under, particularly in the light of events yesterday, and the threat level will be increased."

He agreed that the authorities had "absolutely no idea" yesterday's attacks were being planned.

But he denied claims that London's security had been compromised because of Metropolitan Police officers being deployed to the G8 summit in Scotland.

Scotland Yard issued a casualty hotline number: 0870 1566 344.

Tony Blair was expected to return to London later today after the final session of the G8 summit in Gleneagles.

Anti-terrorist detectives are investigating the possibility that Britain was subjected to its first suicide bombing after the series of co-ordinated no warning strikes in the centre of the city.

A passenger on the double decker bus ripped apart in one of the four blasts said he saw an "extremely agitated" man rummaging in a bag just seconds before the explosion.

A special emergency group met today to discuss the impact of the explosions on overseas tourism to the UK. The Argus reported yesterday morning, in the hours before the terror attacks, how Sussex hoped to reap £40 million on the back of the capital's successful Olympic bid but now tourist experts fear this could be damaged.

A special emergency group, co-ordinated by the VisitBritain organisation, met today to discuss the impact on tourism.

The group also met after September 11 and held meetings during the Sars crisis and the Iraq War.

A VisitBritain spokesman said: "We have spoken to our overseas offices and there has been no evidence of mass cancellations of visits by foreign tourists."