7/7 survivor tells of lucky escape - on to bomb bus

A WOMAN who narrowly escaped one of the 7/7 bombings received a text from her boyfriend saying she had been lucky, moments before she was caught in a second blast, an inquest heard today.

Louise Barry was on the London Underground at Aldgate when terrorist Shehzad Tanweer detonated a backpack full of homemade explosives on another train that had just left the station.

She was evacuated but then boarded the number 30 bus that was blown up in Tavistock Square by fellow suicide bomber Hasib Hussain.

Australian Ms Barry texted her boyfriend straight after the Aldgate blast to say she believed a bomb had gone off.

Moments before the bus exploded, her boyfriend replied: "Actually you were right, they were bombs, lucky you weren't involved."

One of the innocent victims of the bus attack insisted just before the blast that the earlier disruption on the Tube was caused by a power surge, the inquest heard.

While on the bus, Ms Barry used her mobile phone to tell her brother in Australia that she believed bombs were going off in London that day.

She recalled that fellow passenger Sam Ly stood up and told her: "No, I've spoken to my boss at work. He was at that station and it's a power surge."

Minutes later Hussain, 18, set off his device, killing himself and 13 others.

Mr Ly, 28, a Vietnamese-born computer technician from Melbourne, Australia, was severely injured in the blast and died in hospital a week later.

The attacks launched on 7 July, 2005 by Hussain, Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Jermaine Lindsay, 19, were the worst single terrorist atrocity on British soil.

The inquest at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, is expected to last until March