7/7 bombings: Stories that define the bravery of victims and responders 20 years on

Published

2 months ago

July 6, 2025

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Monday marks 20 years since the 7/7 attacks, which saw four suicide bombers kill 52 people and injure 770 others on the London transport network.

The attacks on 7 July 2005 all happened within an hour of each other, with the bombers having met at Luton railway station in the morning before heading to King’s Cross.

Shezhad Tanweer detonated his device at Aldgate, Mohammed Sidique Khan at Edgware Road, and Germaine Lindsay between King’s Cross and Russell Square – all within three minutes of 8.50am.

Habib Hussain detonated his bomb on board the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square at 9.47am.

Two decades have passed, but for the victims’ families, survivors and the responders, the impact is still being felt.

Sky News spoke to some of the people profoundly affected by the attacks.

Passenger went back to the tracks to save lives

Adrian Heili was in the third carriage of the westbound Circle Line train heading towards Paddington.

It was in the second carriage that Mohammad Sidique Khan blew up his device at Edgware Road, killing six people.

If Adrian hadn’t been there, it may well have been more.

He managed to get out of the train and, having previously served as a medic in the Armed Forces, instantly made it his mission to save as many lives as possible.

“Instinct took over,” he tells Sky News.

His bravery first brought him to Daniel Biddle, who had been blown out of the second carriage and was now trapped in a tight space between the tunnel wall and the track.

Adrian remembers crawling in blood to reach Daniel, who he now calls Danny. His left leg had been blown off, his right severed from the knee down and he lost an eye, along with suffering other extensive injuries.

He pinched shut the artery in Daniel’s thigh to stop the bleeding until paramedics got to him.

Daniel has written a book about his experiences, titled Back From The Dead, and has credited Adrian with saving his life.

Adrian eventually helped first responders carry him out. Then he went back into the tunnel several times over to assist with the evacuation of 12 other people.

He pays tribute to the first responders at the scene, who he says were “amazing”.

“Myself and another gentleman by the name of Lee Hunt were the last to actually leave Edgware Road,” he adds.

“And I remember sitting at the top of the platform on the stairs and just looking out after everyone had left.”

In his book, Daniel has been open about his struggles with PTSD after the attack.

Adrian says he has had a “very good support network” around him to help him deal with the aftermath, and adds that talking about it rather than “holding it in” has been vital.

“It still plays an effect on myself, as it has with Danny,” he says, who he has formed a close bond with.

He says PTSD triggers can be all around the survivors, from police and ambulance sirens to the smell of smoke from cooking.

“But it’s how we manage those triggers that that define us,” he says.

On the 20-year anniversary, he adds: “It’s going to be an emotional time. But I think for me, it’s going to be a time of reflection and to honour those that are not with us and those that were injured.

“They still have a voice. They have a voice with me and I’ll remember it. I’ll remember that day and that, for me, is very important.”

‘Instinctively, I decided to see if there was something I could do to help’

You may recognise Paul Dadge from the photograph below, where he’s helping a 7/7 bombing victim after she sustained severe burns to her face.

It went viral before the social media age, featuring on the front of national newspapers, and in others across the world.

The Londoner, who was 28 at the time, was on his way to an office in Hammersmith where he had just got a job.

He passed Edgware Road, where he saw a commotion as people rushed out of the station, and an emergency responder go in.

He didn’t yet know that one of the bombers had just set off the explosive in their backpack.

“Instinctively, I decided to see if there was something I could do to help,” he told Sky News.

Paul, who was a former firefighter, made an announcement to those standing outside the station, telling them to stick together if they had been affected by whatever had happened and to wait at a shop near the scene until they had spoken to a police officer.

Many had black soot on their faces, he says, adding that he initially assumed it was due to a power surge.

Eventually the store was evacuated, so Paul went with the victims to a nearby hotel, and it was while doing so that photographers snapped the famous photos of him comforting the victim with a gauze mask, who had been badly burned.

He started noting down the names and details of those who had been injured, along with the extent of their injuries, so that he could pass them onto the emergency services.

It was only three hours after the incident that Paul found out the injuries had been caused by an attack.

His actions had him deemed a hero by the public.

“I know that after that bombing had occurred, everybody worked together as a team,” he says. “I think it’s a bit of a British thing, really, that when we’re really in trouble, we’re very, very good at working together to help each other.”

He says he is still in touch with people he met on that day, including the victim he was photographed with.

He also says the rest of his life has been “carved” by that day, and that he is now much more politically active and conscious of how emergency services respond to major incidents.

He believes emergency services are “a lot more prepared than they were on 7th July”, but adds that he still thinks they would find it “very difficult” to deal with an incident on the scale of the 7/7 attacks today.

‘What is haunting are those screams’

Sajda Mughal is a survivor of the bombing that hit a Piccadilly line train between King’s Cross and Russell Square.

She tells Sky News that about 10 seconds after leaving King’s Cross “there’s a massive bang… which was the explosion”.

“The train shook as if it was an earthquake, and came to a sudden standstill. I fell off my chair to the ground, people fell forward, lights went out.”

Sajda adds: “The black smoke that was coming through, it was really intense. And then all I could hear was screams. I could hear people screaming, I could hear people shouting, someone grabbing on to me saying, ‘are you okay’.”

She was “frozen and just going into that thought process of we’re going to die, and then me thinking I haven’t said bye to my loved ones, I haven’t got married, I haven’t had kids, I haven’t seen the world.”

She says that “what is haunting from that morning are those screams and hearing ‘blood, she’s hurt, he’s hurt'”.

Sajda says that as she and others were escorted out through the carriage to King’s Cross, the emergency services told them not to turn around and don’t look back.

She thinks that was because the rescuers didn’t want them to see injured individuals, “so it was a very, very surreal, very traumatic and emotional experience”.

Sajda, who is the only known Muslim survivor of 7/7, says getting through the attack alive “turned my life around 360”.

“I took that pain and I turned it into a positive because I didn’t want that happening again. And so I left the corporate world, I left my dream to want to change hearts and minds.”

She became involved with the JAN Trust, including its work countering extremism.

“I have travelled across the UK, I’ve worked with thousands of mothers and Muslim mothers. I have helped to educate them on radicalisation. And I’ve heard from mothers whose sons… went to Syria, who joined ISIS and died.”

Calls for a public inquiry

Graham Foulkes, whose son David was killed in the Edgware Road Tube bomb, wants there to be a public inquiry into what happened.

He says a “public inquiry is the only way because at a public inquiry people can be compelled to come and give evidence. At an inquest, they can just say ‘no, I’m not coming’ and that’s what happens”.

He adds: “The fact that we’re here 20 years later, there are unanswered questions and terrorists are still slipping through, still getting past MI5, still get past MI6 and MI5, needs to be answered.

“We need to have a better system in place and by not being honest and open about what happened 20 years ago, we’ve got no mechanism in place at all.

“It’s still the same people making the same decisions that allowed MSK [Mohammed Sidique Khan] to get through and allowed the Manchester Arena attack and the Westminster Bridge attack. It’s still the same people, still the same processes. The processes need to change.”

Speaking of the last 20 years, Graham says: “We’re lucky enough to have a daughter, and we have the two most wonderful grandchildren as well. But we should have a son, and he should have his family.

“And I shouldn’t be having this conversation with you. I should be at home at this time having dinner or going to the pub with David, and it’s not possible to describe the feeling of having your son murdered in such a pointless way.”

‘The resilience was as inspiring as the attack was ghastly’

“Most of all, my thoughts are with the families of the 52 people who lost their lives and also the more than 700 who were injured, some of them horrifically seriously on that day,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley says.

He also pays tribute to those who stepped forward on the day, like Paul Dadge, and the emergency services, who he says acted “extraordinarily” to help others.

“They and the families and the victims – what strikes me is how they’re still carrying the effects of that day through to today and for the rest of their lives,” he adds, saying you can still see the “heavy burden” many of them carry 20 years on.

The commissioner, who was a senior officer in Surrey at the time, says he remembers the “slow horror” of watching on as investigating and reporting uncovered what had happened.

“The way everyone stepped forward, the bravery… the resilience was as inspiring as the attack was ghastly.”

He says the attacks have led to “massive changes” in counter-terrorism work to better protect the public.

“The first was the changes that brought policing and our security services, particularly MI5, much more close together so that we now have the closest joint operating arrangements anywhere in the world,” he says.

“And secondly, counter-terrorism work became something that wasn’t just about what was based in London and a network was built with bases in all of the regions across the country.”

He adds the unit now has a reach “far stronger and far more effective at protecting communities than we had before that day”.

Asked about those who may still feel under threat from similar attacks now, he says the public has “extraordinary people working hard day in and day out to protect you” and that policing and security services have strengthened due to experiences like that of the 7/7 bombings.

“The efforts of all those who were involved on that day… that all feeds through to today… [and gives us] one of the strongest and most effective preventative approaches you could possibly have,” he says.

“But sadly we are in difficult times and no system will ever be perfect,” he adds, but concludes by saying communities can “be rest assured about the amazing work that’s going on”.

UK

No 10 appointed Mandelson despite security concerns, Sky News understands

Published

3 hours ago

September 11, 2025

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No 10 appointed Mandelson despite security concerns, Sky News understands

The security services expressed concern about the appointment of Lord Mandelson as ambassador to Washington, but No 10 went ahead anyway, Sky News understands.

Downing Street today defended the extensive vetting process which senior civil servants go through in order to get jobs, raising questions about whether or not they missed something or No 10 ignored their advice.

Politics Live: Mandelson sacked as US ambassador following ‘new information’

Sky News has been told by two sources that the security services did flag concerns as part of the process.

No 10 did not judge these concerns as enough to stop the ambassadorial appointment.

It is not known whether all of the detail was shared with Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer personally.

Sky News has been told some members of the security services are unhappy with what has taken place in Downing Street.

Lord Mandelson is close to Sir Keir’s chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, who is known to have been keen on the appointment – and the pair spoke regularly.

No 10 says the security vetting process is all done at a departmental level with no No 10 involvement.

Shadow foreign secretary Priti Patel described the revelations as “extraordinary”.

“For Keir Starmer, and his Chief of Staff Morgan McSweeney, to have appointed Lord Mandelson despite concerns being raised by the security services shows a blatant disregard of all national security considerations and their determination to promote their Labour Party friends,” she said in a statement.

“Starmer leads a crisis riddled government consumed by a chaos of his own making, because he puts his Party before the needs of our country.

“The country deserves the honest truth this spineless prime minister refuses to give them.”

Lord Mandelson was sacked as the UK’s ambassador to the US by Sir Keir earlier on Thursday over his ties to disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The prime minister, who selected Lord Mandelson for the role, made the decision after new emails revealed the Labour peer sent messages of support to Epstein even as he faced jail for sex offences in 2008.

In one particular message, Lord Mandelson had suggested that Epstein’s first conviction was wrongful and should be challenged.

The Foreign Office said the emails showed “the depth and extent of Peter Mandelson’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein is materially different from that known at the time of his appointment”.

The decision to sack the diplomat was made by the prime minister and Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper on Thursday morning, Sky News understands.

This was after Sir Keir had reviewed all the new available information last night.

It comes after a string of allegations around the diplomat’s relationship with Epstein, which emerged in the media this week, including a 2003 birthday message in which he called the sex offender his “best pal”.

Further allegations were then published in The Telegraph on Wednesday morning, suggesting that Lord Mandelson had emailed Epstein to set up business meetings following the latter’s conviction for child sex offences in 2008.

Additional emails were then published detailing how the diplomat wrote to Epstein the day before he went to prison in June 2008 to serve time for soliciting sex from a minor. Lord Mandelson said: “I think the world of you.”

UK

Mandelson is never far from a scandal – and this time he’s been sacked

Published

5 hours ago

September 11, 2025

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Mandelson is never far from a scandal - and this time he's been sacked

Peter Mandelson, the UK ambassador to the US, has been sacked from his role as scrutiny builds over his relationship with disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.

The diplomat’s most famous quotation sums up his attraction to the rich and famous and his fondness for the trappings of wealth.

“We are intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich,” he told tech executives when he was Sir Tony Blair’s trade and industry secretary in 1998.

“As long as they pay their taxes,” he added hurriedly, the former spin doctor known as the “Prince of Darkness” acutely aware of the risk of damaging headlines.

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Now, less than nine months after his controversial appointment by Sir Keir Starmer as UK ambassador, his association with convicted sex offender Epstein suggests once again that he appears unable to avoid scandal.

Aged 71, Lord Mandelson – awarded a peerage by Gordon Brown in 2008 – had to resign from Sir Tony’s cabinet twice, first over an undeclared bank loan and then over intervening in a passport application by a top Indian businessman.

Over four decades, nearly all on the front line of British politics, he has been a consummate political networker, but he has also been one of the most divisive figures in public life and his appointment last December was seen by critics as an act of cronyism by Sir Keir.

Acknowledging that Lord Mandelson was a controversial and divisive figure, Sir Tony declared in 1996: “My project will be complete when the Labour Party learns to love Peter Mandelson.”

The Washington role is seen as the most glittering and important diplomatic post in the UK government. The perks of the job include the luxurious ambassador’s residence in Massachusetts Avenue, a magnificent Queen Anne mansion designed by top architect Sir Edwin Lutyens.

When he appointed him as ambassador, Sir Keir saw Lord Mandelson as a skilful and persuasive link to the president, with his trade experience from his time as a cabinet minister and Brussels commissioner a vital qualification for the job.

Never one for false modesty, Lord Mandelson claims that when he first walked into the Oval Office the president said to him: “God, you’re a good-looking fellow, aren’t you?”

Lord Mandelson can be credited with several diplomatic triumphs in Washington. He played a vital role in ensuring the UK escaped the worst of Trump’s tariffs and he was instrumental in securing a much sought-after trade deal between the UK and the US.

And his silky PR skills were displayed when during Sir Keir’s first visit to the White House in February the PM theatrically pulled out of his inside pocket a letter from King Charles inviting the present to visit the UK.

It was a classic Lord Mandelson stunt and confirmed he’d lost none of the flair for presentation he’d first deployed when he was Labour leader Neil Kinnock’s spin doctor in the 1980s.

Lord Mandelson’s high-profile political career began as a TV producer until his appointment as Labour’s director of communications under Neil Kinnock in 1985.

He was seen as a brilliant if ruthless spin doctor, who masterminded the birth of New Labour but would berate newspaper editors when unfavourable stories were written by their political journalists.

Another classic Lord Mandelson attempt to kill an embarrassing story was to tell the journalist who wrote or broadcast it in a sneering voice: “That is a story that I believe will remain an exclusive.”

He became MP for Hartlepool in 1992 and helped propel Sir Tony to the leadership of the party after John Smith’s death in 1994, a move that led to a bitter feud with Mr Brown.

There’s an amusing story about Mandelson in Hartlepool, which he claims is a myth and blames Mr Kinnock for. It’s claimed he ordered “some of that delicious guacamole” in a fish and chip shop, mistaking mushy peas for avocado dip.

It was a perfect Lord Mandelson story, ridiculing his metropolitan tastes and ignorance of working-class life. But he claims the mistake was made by a young American woman student who was helping Labour’s campaign.

His first cabinet job, trade and industry secretary in 1998, lasted only five months after he was forced to quit after failing to declare a home loan from Labour millionaire Geoffrey Robinson to his building society.

His resignation was similar in one respect to the demise of former deputy prime minister Angela Rayner last week, in that it was over irregularities in buying a property: in Hove in her case, in fashionable Notting Hill in his.

He bounced back as Northern Ireland secretary in 1999 and was said to enjoy the luxury of Hillsborough Castle, which went with the job. But he was forced to resign a second time over claims he helped businessman Srichand Hinduja with an application for UK citizenship.

When he held his seat in Hartlepool in the 2001 general election, Mandelson made a passionate and defiant victory speech at his count in which he declared: “I’m a fighter, not a quitter.”

Yet three years later he did quit as an MP, when he became a trade commissioner in Brussels, serving a four-year term during which he had a spectacular row with French president Nicolas Sarkozy, who accused him of selling out French farmers in trade talks.

There were more controversies arising from his time in Brussels. In 2006, it was reported that he received a free cruise on a yacht from an Italian mogul who was said to have benefited from tariffs on Chinese shoes when Mandelson was EU trade commissioner.

Reports also claimed he had been lent a private jet by banking and business tycoon Nat Rothschild. And it was later reported that he had a holiday in August 2008 on the yacht of Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska off the Greek island of Corfu.

Mr Deripaska was said to have benefited from a cut in EU aluminium tariffs introduced by Mandelson. But prime minister Brown said Mandelson’s dealings with Mr Deripaska had been “found to be above board”.

After Brussels came perhaps his most spectacular and unexpected political comeback, when in 2008 his old foe Gordon Brown, by now prime minister but facing challenges to his leadership, brought him back as business secretary with a peerage.

A year later, Mr Brown awarded him the grand title, previously held by Michael Heseltine under John Major, of first secretary of state, a position he held until Labour’s election defeat in 2010.

To this day, Lord Mandelson remains a devoted Blairite rather than a soulmate of Mr Brown. And in the run-up to Sir Keir’s election victory last year he was back in the fold, offering advice on campaigning and policy.

He got his reward with the plum job of ambassador in Washington. But his links to a very American scandal, involving the disgraced financier and sex offender Epstein, have pushed him out of political life. Again.

UK

Why didn’t Keir Starmer fire Peter Mandelson yesterday?

Published

6 hours ago

September 11, 2025

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Why didn't Keir Starmer fire Peter Mandelson yesterday?

Peter Mandelson’s position was completely unsustainable, but it took Sir Keir Starmer 24 hours after everybody else to realise the inevitable.

In the chaotic interim, this generated the extraordinary spectacle of No10 saying that they had full confidence in their man in Washington because – and it feels incredible to type this – No10 had been fully aware that the peer had an extended relationship with a convicted paedophile after the point he had been to jail in the US, and was content with this situation.

An incredible state of affairs.

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This is why the issue has become a matter of Starmer‘s judgement almost as much as Peter Mandelson‘s.

Indeed, there were echoes here of the Chris Pincher affair that led to Boris Johnson’s downfall – a leader stubbornly defending acts which revolted the bulk of the party, in a tone deaf act of self-harm.

And revolted, they were.

Almost the entire Labour Party was reacting with horror at the revelation, and even more so at the defence.

Less than 24 hours before his departure, Starmer was saying: “The ambassador has repeatedly expressed his deep regret for association with him, he’s right to do so. I have confidence in him and he’s playing an important role in the UK-US relationship.”

Words of certainty – but done once again without access to full facts.

Dangerously, the PM was also defending a vetting process which would by implication put him in possession of facts that should have ruled Mandelson out of that job.

“Full due process has gone through when the appointment was made,” he said.

Now the line from a junior foreign office minister is that Mandelson hadn’t told him. So either the vetting failed or this isn’t quite accurate.

My understanding is that no one in government knows the last time Mandelson did see Epstein – the absence of certainty on that key fact must have set off alarm bells.

Right now, No10 will be thinking and hoping that, with just six days to go until the state visit by Donald Trump, which was meant to be organised by Mandelson, people will not focus too much on this question.

However, given the current rate of one big beast in government being sacked every week, this will ultimately land at Starmer’s feet.