21 July 2005: More

Looks like more transport bombs in London.

Today was going well, too. Decent results from some experiments and half a paper written already. England holding the upper hand in the first morning of the Ashes and nice afternoon weather. And now this.

As of 1.45, nobody is quite sure what's happening. Gunshots? Undetonated explosives? A nail bomb? Someone running from the scene? There's a number 26 bus parked pretty much right outside Shoreditch Tabernacle on Hackney Road, roof intact but nobody near the scene, implying the police may still think there's an explosive on board. Two weeks on, three tubes and one bus. Hard not to think it's connected.

"No reports of casualities," say the services. We can only hope.

Added 3.15
Looks smaller and much more minor than first feared, although there are still large enough exclusion zones around the incident sites that you wonder if there's still something waiting to go off, and police do seem to be confirming that they've sealed off the hospital at UCL and are trying to hunt someone down in there.

But consider this. Between eight and fourteen people were killed by suicide bombers already in Iraq today. The Algerian ambassador was this morning kidnapped in Baghdad. John Simpson described his quarterly visits to Baghdad as getting progressively worse - in fact, a 'descent into a bombing quagmire'.

I don't know why, but I just felt it important that that information was presented too.