Shaken eyewitnesses painted a horrific picture of blood and carnage after near-simultaneous blasts rocked London, killing several people and wounding scores.

The explosions hit three subway stations and a double-decker bus in a series of blasts, beginning at 8:51 a.m. (3:51 a.m. ET) and ended about 40 minutes later when a blast ripped the top off a bus in Tavistock Square in central London.

JAMES SOHOTHA, King's Cross station

Sohotha was travelling on the subway, when he was forced to evacuate at King's Cross station.

"I saw some of the walking wounded who had obviously been injured in a blast coming up the escalators, who were bleeding quite heavily, some of them," he told CTV's Canada AM.

"To be honest, we really didn't know what was going on. It wasn't until later that we saw some of the injured people just bleeding and everything, that you sort of started to think it was a bomb."

GARY LEWIS, King's Cross station

"People were covered in black soot and smoke. People were running everywhere and screaming. It was chaos," said Lewis, who was evacuated from the station.

"The one haunting image was someone whose face was totally black and pouring with blood."

JENNY GIMPEL, Tavistock Square

"I could see the bus with the roof ripped off and one side peeled down," Gimpel said, who was on her way to work when she saw the bus. "It looked absolutely horrific."

BELINDA SEABROOK, Tavistock Square

"I was on the bus in front and heard an incredible bang, I turned round and half the double decker bus was in the air," she told Press Association, the British news agency.

She said the bus was packed with people, and half the vehicle seemed to fly through the air after the explosion.

PAUL TADICH, Tavistock Square

Tadich is a Canadian who has been living in London for two years. He lives close to the scene of the bus explosion, and spoke to CTV.

"My work is at Goodge Street and Tottenham Court Road, and the bus blew up just about 200 metres to the west of there. It made me feel angry, because I've been here for two years and I felt quite safe, but being so close to [the explosion] made me feel quite vulnerable."

HILARY PRESTON, Edgware Road station

Preston, who was evacuated at the station, told CNN she heard an enormous bang on the train next to the one she was travelling on.

"The whole thing just shook. Our carriage filled with smoke and I thought, 'My God, this is it. We're all going to die.'"

She said the train driver then walked through the carriage and told everyone not to panic, and not to look into the next carriage, where the explosion had gone off.

"No one knew what was going on but we could see people who were burnt."

CORNELIA BERG, Edgware Road station

Berg said she was riding the subway toward the station when she heard the blast.

"Everything went black, and people threw themselves to the floor in panic," Berg told Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet by phone.

"The car quickly filled with smoke and a lot of people used their umbrellas to try to break the windows so that we could get air. A mother with her two small children sat next to me and cried desperately."

SIMON CORVETT, Edgware Road station

Corvett, who was on an eastbound train from the station, said: "All of a sudden there was this massive huge bang."

"It was absolutely deafening and all the windows shattered," he said.

"There were just loads of people screaming and the carriages filled with smoke.

"You could see the carriage opposite was completely gutted," he said. "There were some people in real trouble."

ARASH KAZEROUNI, Aldgate East station

"There was a loud bang and the train ground to a halt," Kazerouni told Agence France-Presse.

"People started panicking, screaming and crying as smoke came into the carriage. A man told everyone to be calm and we were led to safety along the track. I went past the carriage where I think the explosion was. It was the second one from the front. The metal was all blown outwards and there were people inside being helped by paramedics. One guy was being tended outside on the track. His clothes were torn off and he seemed pretty badly burned."

SCOTT WENBOURNE, Aldgate East station

Wenbourne told BBC news what he saw after a bomb exploded in the carriage in front of him, and he was led from his train to Aldgate station.

"As we walked up past the carriage we saw debris and torn metal. I noticed the carriage was completely ripped apart on one side. I saw three bodies on the track. I couldn't look, it was so horrific. I think one was moving but I'm not too sure."

LOYITA WORLEY, Aldgate East station

Worley, who was travelling from Moorgate to Aldgate, told Reuters that 20 to 30 "walking wounded" had been led from the damaged subway carriage, which had been torn from "floor to ceiling."

"Many were shaking, there were a lot of head injuries, it was very bloody," she said.

She said most passengers remained calm even as objects fell down onto the roof of the carriage.

SARAH REID, Liverpool Street station

Reid, was on the carriage next to the one which was struck by an explosion near Liverpool Street station.

She told Britain's Press Association that she was led down the track after seeing a carriage ripped apart with the roof blown off.

"I was on the train and there was a fire outside the carriage window and then there was a sudden jolt which shook us forward. The explosion was behind me. Some people took charge. We went out of the back of the carriage," she said.

"There was really hard banging from the carriage next door to us," she said, of the events immediately after the blast.

Describing being led away from the scene, she said: "A carriage was split in two, all jagged, and without a roof, just open."

MARCIN STEFANSKI

Stefanski, who was in a subway carriage that was next to one that exploded, described a scene of chaos.

He said: "I just experienced a huge explosion and the glass hitting me in my back. People started screaming around me, there was glass everywhere, we couldn't breathe, there was no way to get off the train."

"I was in the front of the first carriage and there was a huge, massive hole in the carriage," he told CNN.

"As I went past the second carriage I could just see the bodies lying all over the floor."

UNIDENTIFIED VICTIM

"On the tube there was maybe six, even people lying on the floor. A lot of people with a lot of blood on their faces and ripped clothes," a victim with blood drying on his face told reporters, speaking from his hospital bed.

"When we got up above on the concourse, there was probably only about six or seven people in similar condition to myself. I wasn't really looking around to be honest. I was just trying to stop the cuts from flowing blood."

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS

One caller to BBC Five said his friend had seen "the bus ripped open like a can of sardines and bodies everywhere."

UNIDENTIFIED WITNESS

"The smoke intensified, the screaming intensified, the hysteria, and that's what it was, became almost pandemonium," an unidentified eyewitness told reporters.

With files from The Associated Press