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7-7

7/7, also known as the 7 July 2005 London bombings, were a series of four coordinated suicide bombings carried out by the Islamist homegrown terrorists Hasib Hussain, Mohammad Sidique Khan, Germaine Lindsay, and Shehzad Tanweer on 7 July 2005, targeting commuters on London's public transportation system. According to Khan's martyrdom video, "I am directly responsible for protecting and avenging my Muslim brothers and sisters. Until we feel security you will be our targets and until you stop the bombing, gassing, imprisonment and torture of my people, we will not stop this fight. We are at war and I am a soldier. Now you too will taste the reality of this situation." Tanweer specified that the attack was vengeance for Britain's military involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain's military support for America and Israel, and for voting for a government which "continues to oppress our mothers, children, brothers and sisters in Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and Chechnya." Three British-Pakistani terrorists from Leeds and a Jamaican-born convert to Islam drove to Luton, Bedfordshire before taking the train to London, arriving at King's Cross Station at 8:30 AM. At 8:49 AM, within 50 seconds of each other, Tanweer bombed a six-car Circle line train traveling between Liverpool Street Station and the Aldgate tube station (killing himself and 7 people), Khan bombed another Underground train en route from the Edgware Road tube station to the Paddington tube station (killing himself and 6 people), and Lindsay bombed a train from King's Cross tothe Russell Square tube station (killing himself and 26 people). At 9:00 AM, a Number 30 double-decker bus left Marble Arch for Hackney Wick, arriving at Euston station at 9:35 AM to pick up passengers who had been evacuated from the Tube. However, Hussain boarded the bus and detonated his explosives as the bus passed Tavistock Square at 9:47 AM; a number of doctors and medical staff in the British Medical Association building rushed out to help the survivors. The bombings killed 52 people (plus the 4 bombers) and injured 784, with 32 of the fatalities being British citizens and the rest being foreign permanent residents. According to a Daily Telegraph poll, a quarter of British Muslims sympathized with the motives behind the attacks and 6% felt that the attacks were fully justified, al-Qaeda cleric Omar Bakri Muhammad praised the attacks, and 2,000 residents of Tanweer's village of origin prayed for him at his funeral; however, most Muslim clerics and bodies around the world (among them the terrorist group Hamas) condemned the attacks as barbaric.