London terror attacks of the past 25 years


In the past 25 years London has been rocked by regular attacks, mostly by Irish republican groups but today's bombing is by far the most bloody with at least 33 people killed and hundreds injured.

The last attack was a car bomb in Ealing Broadway on August 3, 2001. The explosion, blamed on the Real IRA splinter group, caused no fatalities but injured seven people on a street full of restaurants and pubs.

Earlier in the same year, there were three separate attacks by the Real IRA. In mid-April and then early May, two small incendiary devices exploded at exactly the same spot outside a postal depot in Hendon, North London. No one was injured in the first attack but one passer-by was hurt in the second.

A month earlier, a bomb exploded outside the BBC Television Centre in Wood Lane, West London. The device, which was planted inside a black cab, detonated as bomb disposal experts attempted to carry out a controlled explosion. One person suffered minor injuries in the attack and the landmark building was badly damaged.

In September 2000 the Real IRA fired an anti-tank rocket at MI6’s headquarters in Vauxhall Cross, South London, causing damage to the intelligence service building but no injuries.

In the summer of 2000, bomb disposal experts performed two controlled explosions on a device planted on the Tube line near Ealing Broadway underground station. The incident was just a month after an unsuccessful attempt to blow up Hammersmith Bridge.

These attacks were the first by Irish republicans since the IRA renewed its ceasefire in July 1997.

London was not free of terrorism in the intervening years because in May and June of 1999 the capital’s ethnic and gay communities were hit by three nail bomb attacks.

Dozens were injured and three people were killed in the space of two weeks when neo-Nazi extremist David Copeland planted the devices in Brick Lane, Brixton and Soho.

Before the nail bomb attacks, London had not suffered a terrorist incident since the IRA attempted to blow up Hammersmith Bridge for the first time in April 1996.

The bomb contained 32lb of Semtex making it the largest high-explosive device ever planted on the British mainland but only the detonator went off saving possibly hundreds of lives.

Two months earlier, in an incident similar to today’s explosion in Russell Square, Edward O’Brien, a member of the IRA, was killed when the bomb he was transporting exploded prematurely on a bus in the Aldwych in central London. The bus driver, another passenger and eight passers by were hurt in the explosion.

The incident came just a week after the IRA spectacularly ended its ceasefire with a massive bomb attack on Canary Wharf in east London’s Docklands area in February 1996.

Two local newsagents were killed in the attack and more than 100 injured. The bomb caused more than £85 million of damage.

Two years earlier the IRA launched a series of mortar rockets at Heathrow airport. The three separate assults, which occurred within the space of a week, caused widespread disruption but nobody was killed.

In the previous three years, between February 1991 and February 1994 the IRA launched 30 separate attacks in and around London. The most high profile was a mortar attack against Number 10, Downing Street when Prime Minister John Major was in residence. One of the rockets exploded in the garden injuring one person.

The most deadly attack was in April 1992 when a car bomb near the Baltic Exchange in the Financial District killed three people and injured 80 others.

In the 1980s, there were nine IRA attacks on London, the most deadly being the bombing of Harrods in December 1983. Three police officers and three civilians were killed and 90 people injured.

The 1980s also saw two other high-profile terrorist attacks on the capital. In 1984 WPC Yvonne Fletcher was killed and ten people injured after shots were fired from the Libyan People's Bureau in central London.

WPC Fletcher had been helping control a small demonstration outside the embassy when she received the fatal stomach wound.

Three years earlier six gunmen held 26 people hostage at the Iranian embassy in London. After a six-day standoff, the SAS stormed the building killing five of the hostage takers and arresting one other. All bar three of the captives were freed unharmed. One died and two were injured in the cross-fire.