- LONDON (Reuters) - Yvonne
Nash just wants to know what has happened to her partner Jamie Gordon,
missing since four deadly bomb blasts brought London to a standstill.
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- Nash has issued an urgent appeal for information about
Gordon, who was in the Euston area of London on Thursday at the same time
as the last of the four bombs tore the roof off a bus.
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- "We're doing all we can in terms of contacting hospitals
and the casualty (information line) but we've had no luck in tracking him
down. The not knowing is so painful. We just want to know what happened,"
she said.
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- People were still frantically searching hospitals for
friends and relatives on Friday evening.
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- A police emergency line had handled more than 103,000
calls by midday on Friday, and hospital phones rang incessantly as the
search grew more desperate.
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- Some people travelled from hospital to hospital handing
out pictures of their missing loved ones and colleagues, while others sent
out appeals for information on television and radio.
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- John Steadman, 39, was cycling with friends round the
London hospitals looking for his brother-in-law, Philip Russell, 28.
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- "I'm suggesting going round showing some of the
doctors and nurses photos just in case there is human error putting in
the information," he told reporters outside the Royal London Hospital
in east London.
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- At the Accident and Emergency unit at St Mary's hospital
in central London four young women working at an accountancy firm handed
out pictures of missing colleague Monika Suchocka, 23, a visiting student
from Poland getting work experience.
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- "We had a call from her saying she was walking to
catch the bus to work because the underground station was closed. That
was just minutes before the bus blew up," said colleague Tracy.
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- "Her English is good. But if she is in shock it
might have gone. We just want to find her. She is such a lovely girl."
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- SOME VICTIMS STILL BEING TREATED
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- Police said more than 700 people were injured in the
blasts which hit three underground trains and the bus without warning in
less than one hour at the height of the morning rush hour.
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- On Friday afternoon there were 86 casualties still being
treated at six London hospitals, with at least 19 in intensive care.
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- Outside University College Hospital, near the site where
the bus bomb killed at least 13 people, a young woman was desperately searching
for a lost friend.
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- Too upset to speak, she handed a Reuters reporter a sheet
of paper bearing the picture of Rachelle Chung For Yuen, a smiling east
Asian woman wearing a denim jacket.
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- "Her families and friends fear that she might have
been caught in the King's Cross tube station explosion on the Piccadilly
line," it read. "We have been looking for her endlessly since
the incident, but to no avail."
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- Hair stylist Phil Beer, 22, was on the same underground
train with a colleague travelling south from Kings Cross on Thursday morning.
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- His colleague is in St Thomas hospital suffering severe
burns, but Phil is still missing.
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- "It is killing us," his mother Kim told Reuters.
"He always kisses me and cuddles me and tells me he loves me every
time he goes out of the door -- which is what he did yesterday and I haven't
seen or heard from him since.
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- "He would always phone me, no matter what,"
she said. "We have called the hospitals, the police, the help lines,
done everything. It is devastating."
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- But amid the anxiety, there was some slight relief.
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- Martine Wright, 32, an office worker from Finsbury Park,
north London, was discovered in intensive care in hospital on Friday after
anxious family and friends put out an appeal to find her.
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- - Additional reporting by James Kilner and Emma Reynolds
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- http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L08212206.htm
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