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Search Terms tried Remembering the 7/7 bombings Canadian reporter in london witnessed the carnage CHRIS COBB, Canwest News service; Ottawa Citizen Published: Saturday, July 05

Peter Zimonjic wasn't in the London underground train that the suicide bomber blew apart, but he was close enough to witness the carnage.

"It was," he says, "like someone had thrown a bunch of human beings into a blender and poured it into the carriage."

Such was the horror of what the British dubbed 7/7 - the London Transport suicide bombings that killed 52 people and injured more than 700 on July 7, 2005. A construction worker bows his head outside King's Cross station in London, a day after the July 7, 2005, bombings.View Larger Image View Larger Image A construction worker bows his head outside King's Cross station in London, a day after the July 7, 2005, bombings. CARL DE SOUZA , AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE VIA GETTY IMAGES Email to a friendEmail to a friendPrinter friendlyPrinter friendly Font:

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The attacks were co-ordinated to hit London Transport as morning rush hour was ebbing. Shortly before 9 a.m., the homegrown Islamist attackers detonated four bombs - three on packed underground trains and a fourth that ripped apart a double-decker.

Zimonjic, a former Ottawa Citizen journalist working in London, was travelling to work on the underground when there was "a loud crack" and his train slammed to a sudden and violent halt, tossing passengers forward. Two trains stopped alongside each other, barely 12 inches apart. Choking smoke, darkness and the piercing screams of pain and fear began the crazed and confused hour that Into the Darkness chronicles with gripping, often horrifying detail.

Graphic though much of Zimonjic's book is, the overarching value of Into the Darkness is that it gives permanent voice to the victims and unusual insight into the horrors they suffered. What's more typical after events like terrorist attacks or school shootings is that the victims quickly become forgotten statistics and the perpetrators are forever remembered.

For a young journalist growing tired of the least-choice assignments and formulaic writing demanded by his newspaper, the Sunday Telegraph, fate had dealt Zimonjic a good professional hand.

He became a fleeting journalistic star, appearing on TV and radio and able to report as a journalist who was actually there - someone who had slid on the blood-sodden carriage floors, saw the disembodied limbs and literally ripped to shreds the shirt off his own back to help staunch the flow of blood from victims' bodies. It was the first time Zimonjic had seen a dead body, let alone the brutality and mayhem that the terrorist's bomb had visited upon this random group of innocent people.

But it was a high price to pay for a good story. He emerged from the experience with a post-traumatic shock that lasted almost three months.

"I wish it hadn't happened," adds Zimonjic, who moved back to Canada several months ago and is now a parliamentary reporter with Sun Media. "I wish it hadn't happened to anybody. But if you're handed lemons, it's best to make lemonade."

The genesis of Into the Darkness was a website Zimonjic created for survivors a few weeks after the bombings. During his numerous appearances on TV, radio and in print, he promoted the website that eventually attracted 250 messages ranging in length from 2,000 words to a few paragraphs.

His growing enthusiasm to write more was met with waning interest by British news media. A friend suggested he do a book.

"So I went to the literary editor of the Telegraph," he recalls, "and asked him how to get a book published. He said get an agent, so I wrote to the top five agents."

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