'That could have been me': Parsons Green residents try to process local bomb attack

“I could have been on that Tube, that could have been me,” says Gautam Krishna as he hovers by a police cordon in Parsons Green.

His children are locked in their school gym as police evacuate homes and businesses from around the Tube station where a bomb partially exploded in the height of rush hour.

Like other local residents, Mr Krishna is struggling to comprehend how a terror attack struck this leafy and affluent corner of West London.

“It’s normally three people deep just to get on the Tube so if anything goes off it would take people out,” he adds.

Kate Capilupi, 35, was walking her daughters to school when flames shot through a packed District Line carriage, sparking a stampede of commuters attempting to flee.

“I got back home and there was a police officer at my front door,” she says. “He told me there had been an incident on the Tube and I couldn’t go in.

“My husband was on the Tube an hour earlier and we walk past 10 times a day.”

Passengers described a “fireball” sweeping through the packed District Line carriage at around 8.20am, singeing off one man’s hair and leaving others with severe burns.

The explosion caused a stampede of passengers trying to escape from the station, as some stayed behind to film the burning device that had failed to fully detonate.

A spinning class was underway at the nearby exercise studio when a woman ran in shouting that there had been a terror attack.

Mark Arnell, the director of Ride Republic, says: “Then the police came – the first officer said we needed to leave or to get downstairs and hide, then the second one told us to evacuate.

“We got outside and police were banked all down the road and outside the school.

“People were running down the road and people were crying, there were loads of children.”

Mr Arnell is among locals crowded into the Local Hero coffee shop, which is giving free coffee to police officers dashing in from parked vans lining the streets.

Despite the addition of armed police, plain-clothes officers, paramedics and the drone of police helicopters, many Parsons Green residents are continuing life as normal.

An elderly couple walk arm in arm down the Fulham Road with their shopping, attempting to pass under a police cordon before being gently advised to take another route, while a woman walks her bichon frise to the park.

Several businesses are closed, with staff unable to get in to work, but others continue to thrive, with women watching the assembled world’s media while getting manicures inside a chic salon.

Residents are offering police manning cordons stretching around the station water and food, erecting signs offering phone charges and toilet breaks.

Teo Citino, the owner of nearby restaurant Il Pagliaccio, has set up a table with free pizza for the emergency services.

“My wife and daughter could have been on that train, I live next to the station,” he says. “They were evacuated from the house in pyjamas.

“I must admit, I have been very, very lucky because they usually get the train to go to my daughter’s school, she is 12 years old.”

Meanwhile, forensic officers could be seen walking through the stationary Tube train still at the platform raised over tree-lined streets as the manhunt continued for those behind the bombing attempt.

Asked whether a terror attack so close to home was a concern for his family, Mr Krishna replied: “These things happen, it’s a risk of living in London.”

The bleak assessment appears to be widely shared after a stream of terror attacks striking Westminster, Manchester, London Bridge, Finsbury Park, Buckingham Palace and now Parsons Green.

The UK’s terror threat level remains at severe, meaning further attacks are considered “highly likely”, and security officials had considered a new atrocity a matter of when, rather than if.

The explosion in Parsons Green came on the same day as France was rocked by another two attacks – one by a knife-wielding man shouting Isis slogans while assaulting a soldier in central Paris, and another in Chalon-sur-Saône, where two women were hit with a hammer by a suspect shouting “Allahu Akbar” – and Europe remains on high alert.

In London, Theresa May urged people to “go about their daily lives”, as armed police were deployed on the transport network and at key sites.

Sadiq Khan, the capital’s mayor, said terrorists were once again trying to “kill, to injure, to disrupt our way of life”, adding: “We will not allow terrorists to divide our communities – we will never allow terrorists to succeed.”