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CJ Cregg
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Joined: 05 Oct 2002
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 Tue Nov 01, 2005 12:19 pm Tributes paid to London bombing victims |
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LONDON, England (Reuters) -- Queen Elizabeth II and Prime Minister Tony Blair joined relatives of victims and survivors of the July London suicide bombings at a memorial service on Tuesday to honor those killed.
Dressed in black the sovereign arrived in the royal Bentley with the Duke of Edinburgh at St. Paul's Cathedral after passing through a tight security cordon.
Four Britons killed themselves and 52 others when they detonated bombs on three underground trains and a double decker bus during the morning rush hour in the capital on July 7.
Most of the dead were British but the among them were nationals from Ireland, the United States, Mauritania, Italy, Nigeria, Grenada, Poland, Turkey, Australia, New Zealand, Israel, France, Ghana and Bangladesh.
Rows of parked embassy cars showed London's diplomatic corps had turned out in strength.
The service will be led by the cathedral's dean John Moses, while the spiritual head of the Anglican Church, Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, will deliver the sermon.
The 2,300-strong congregation was mainly be made up of the victims' relatives, some of the hundreds who were injured, and representatives from emergency services who were called to the scenes of the attacks.
Government members and the leaders of Britain's two main opposition parties Michael Howard and Charles Kennedy, will also attend, while London mayor Ken Livingstone will deliver a reading. Despite media speculation, relatives of the bombers have not been invited.
"We come to this cathedral to remember before God those who died and those who were injured in the attacks on London on the seventh of July," the dean will tell the congregation.
"We give thanks for their lives and we hold them in our prayers, and with them we remember the victims of terrorism all over the world."
The Queen will be met at the cathedral by victims' families and will receive a posy of flowers from 7-year-old Ruby Gray, whose father Richard was killed in one of the blasts.
However, her 11-year-old brother, Adam, has boycotted the ceremony, because he holds Blair responsible for the attacks.
"He is very angry with the bombers but he also blames the (Iraq) war and he blames the government," his mother Louise told the London Evening Standard newspaper on Tuesday. "He doesn't want to be part of anything that has Tony Blair there."
During the service, representatives of the emergency services, transport staff and relatives of those who died will carry four candles bearing the names of the locations of the bombings to the cathedral's Dome Altar.
Young people, representing five of the capital's different religious communities, will then light a "Candle of Hope".
"We belong to different faiths but we share a common grief at the suffering inflicted on so many of our fellow Londoners," Bishop of London Richard Chartres will say.
Copyright 2005 Reuters. |
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