London transit bombings killed dozens

On the morning of 7 July 2005, four British suicide bombers detonated homemade devices across London’s transport network during the rush hour. Three blasts ripped through London Underground trains within seconds of each other near Aldgate, Edgware Road, and Russell Square. Roughly an hour later, a fourth bomber blew apart a double-decker bus in Tavistock Square.

The coordinated attack killed 52 people of 18 nationalities, alongside the four attackers, and injured more than 700. It was the deadliest terrorist atrocity on British soil since the 1988 Lockerbie bombing, and the country’s first Islamist suicide attack.

Four ordinary-looking men with backpacks turned a commute into the UK’s worst single day of terrorism in decades.

The bombers, mostly young men from West Yorkshire, had built their devices from concentrated hydrogen peroxide. The attacks, quickly dubbed 7/7, reshaped Britain’s counter-terrorism strategy and exposed the new threat of “home-grown” radicalisation.