LONDON \u2014 A homemade bomb exploded on a packed London subway train during rush hour on Friday, leaving 18 people injured but no one seriously hurt. Police said the explosion was a terrorist attack, the fifth in Britain this year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Commuters reported a noise and a flash aboard the District Line train at Parsons Green station in the southwest of the city, followed by chaos as hundreds of people rushed to get away from danger.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mark Rowley, head of counterterrorism for the Metropolitan Police, said \u201cwe now assess this was a detonation of an improvised explosive device.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said 18 people had been injured, most with \u201cflash burns.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Photos taken inside the train show a white plastic bucket inside a foil-lined shopping bag. Flames and what appear to be wires emerge from the top.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
London ambulance service said they had sent multiple crews to the Parsons Green station and 18 people were hospitalized, though none had life-threatening injuries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere was out of the corner of my eye a massive flash of flames that went up the side of the train,\u201d eyewitness Chris Wildish told Sky News, then \u201can acrid chemical smell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said many of those on board were schoolchildren, who were knocked around as the crowd surged away from the fireball.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another commuter, Richard Aylmer-Hall, said he saw several people injured, apparently trampled as they fled what he described as a packed train.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At capacity, the train could hold more than 800 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI saw crying women, there was lots of shouting and screaming, there was a bit of a crush on the stairs going down to the streets,\u201d Aylmer-Hall, said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ryan Barnett, 25, said the scene as people tried to leave the station was \u201cabsolute chaos.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said, \u201cI ended up squashed on the staircase, people were falling over, people fainting, crying, there were little kids clinging on to the back of me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aerial footage later showed commuters from other subway trains being evacuated along the elevated track.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rowley said the domestic intelligence service, MI5, was assisting with the investigation, led by the police Counterterrorism Command.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He gave no information about potential suspects, saying \u201cIt\u2019s very much a live investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Transport for London said subway services were suspended along the line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
London Mayor Sadiq Khan said the city \u201cutterly condemns the hideous individuals who attempt to use terror to harm us and destroy our way of life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
London has been targeted by attackers several times this year, with deadly vehicle attacks near Parliament, on London Bridge and near a mosque in Finsbury Park in north London. Beyond the capital, a May 22 suicide bomb attack at Manchester Arena killed 22 people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The London Underground itself has been targeted several times in the past, notably in July 2005, when suicide bombers blew themselves up on three subway trains and a bus, killing 52 people and themselves. Four more bombers tried a similar attack two weeks later, but their devices failed to fully explode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year Damon Smith, a student with an interest in weapons and Islamic extremism, left a knapsack filled with explosives and ball bearings on a London subway train. It failed to explode.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its recent Inspire magazine, al-Qaida urged supporters to target trains.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Separately, French counterterrorism authorities were investigating an attempted knife attack on a soldier patrolling a large Paris subway interchange.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Paris prosecutor\u2019s office says counterterrorism investigators have opened a probe into Friday morning\u2019s incident at the Chatelet station in central Paris, based on preliminary examination of the attacker\u2019s background.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The knife-wielding assailant tried to attack a soldier with a special military force assigned to protect prominent sites following deadly Islamic extremist attacks. He was quickly arrested and no one was hurt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
___<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Gregory Katz in London and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n\n
A homemade bomb exploded on a packed London subway train during rush hour on Friday, leaving 18 people injured but no one seriously hurt. Police said the explosion was a terrorist attack, the fifth in Britain this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":72998,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":8,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["flashpoints","news"],"primary_category":""},"4":{"categories":["news","flashpoints","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"6":{"categories":["news","flashpoints","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"},"7":{"categories":["news","flashpoints","daily-news-roundup","newsletters"],"primary_category":"flashpoints"}}},"categories":[100,8,12,25],"tags":[],"coauthors":[5168],"class_list":["post-36573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-daily-news-roundup","category-flashpoints","category-news","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"DRLQIYEKBRFJ3DVFAGG66W67H4","arc_canonical_url":"\/flashpoints\/2017\/09\/15\/18-hurt-as-improvised-bomb-explodes-on-london-subway-train\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n