A woman walks past police officers near Shepherd’s Bush station. (Reuters)

London, July 21: Outside Warren Street station, people who were evacuated from the Tube spoke of what they had experienced.

Sofiane Mohellavi, 35, from Walthamstow, said he had smelt smoke in his carriage on the Victoria Line northbound train. “I was sitting in the carriage reading a book and I smelt something burning, like wiring or tyres, and it just got more intense.

“Suddenly people panicked and started screaming and were walking on each other’s backs trying to get the hell out of there. I couldn’t move, I didn’t know what to do, whether to run or not.

“People ran and left their shoes and belongings when they smelt the burning," Mr Mohellavi said. Victoria Line passenger Ivan McCracken claimed a traveller’s rucksack had exploded on the Tube outside the station.

He told Sky News: “I was in a middle carriage and the train was not far short of Warren Street station when suddenly the door between my carriage and the next one burst open and dozens of people started rushing through. Some were falling, there was mass panic.

“It was difficult to get the story from any of them what had happened but when I got to ground level there was an Italian young man comforting an Italian girl who told me he had seen what had happened.

“He said that a man was carrying a rucksack and the rucksack suddenly exploded. It was a minor explosion but enough to blow open the rucksack.

“The man then made an exclamation as if something had gone wrong. At that point everyone rushed from the carriage.” McCracken said he smelled smoke but did not see any injured passengers.

Oval station

A witness at Oval underground station told Sky News he heard a sound “like champagne popping” then passengers erupting in panic.

“As far as I know from what a lady at the top of the escalator was saying, someone came into the carriage, dumped the bag and ran out. Some people tried to stop him but he ran out.” He said: “I was in the carriage next to the one where the bag was. All of a sudden there was a popping, it sounded like champagne popping. I didn’t think anything of it at the time but then I heard a lot of shouting from the next door carriage.

“People started saying: ‘Smoke, smoke’. One of the train guys came through and said: ‘Get off the train, we’re evacuating, everyone out’.

“As we were walking past the carriage we could see the bag sitting on the chair. It was a big, black rucksack, like the backpack-type ones that you get. When they got upstairs, people were really distressed, one lady was crying.”

A woman said she saw a man holding a rucksack standing next to a woman with a baby. She said the man dropped the bag and ran out of the carriage. Other passengers tried to chase him but as far as she knew, he had not been caught.

Shepherd’s Bush

At the Shepherd’s Bush station of the Hammersmith and City line, Rebecca Hamilton, 34, from Chiswick, was working in Bush Studios, a rehearsal studio in the arches directly underneath the station when she was told to evacuate.

She said: “We work underneath the station in the arches and police came in and kind of told us to get out basically, just to drop everything and get out. We have left all our cars and everything in there.”

She continued: “We didn’t hear any noise but we didn’t hear trains for about a good half-an-hour before and they just told us to get out and we ran out. When we first came out of the arches we just mingled around but now they are telling us to get back (to the moving police cordon).”

Hackney bus

A witness in Hackney said the driver of the number 26 bus had reported smelling cordite.

Passengers and people in surrounding houses and shops were evacuated. A worker in the area told Sky News that Hackney Road had been cordoned off, but that the area was quite quiet and he could not see any major damage.