Amanda Penn was on her way to work this morning from South London, travelling north on the Victoria line when her train pulled into Stockwell station only moments after police shot dead a suspected suicide bomber on the neighbouring Northern line platform.

People were running everywhere, trying to get out of the station in case of a bomb attack. Ms Penn's immediate thought was to join them - until the passengers already in the station, banging on the windows, told them to stay on the train and carry on to safety.

After getting off the Tube at Pimlico station the 28-year-old research analyst told Times Online about an unforgettable journey to work.

She said: "We pulled into Stockwell, I was on the train from Brixton, on the Victoria Line, and as we pulled into the station we saw everyone running alongside the train and out of the station. People were banging on the windows.

"When the train stopped I think we all thought there had been a bomb, so everyone's instinct was to get off, but then everyone on the platform shouted 'Get in the train, get in the train!' So people got on and some of them said they had heard gunshots. One woman with two kids, she was middle-aged, said she had heard gunshots.

"People were panicking and someone dropped a duffel bag on the platform and I thought, 'Holy f***, there's another bomb'.

"Then as we pulled out, someone on the train had the initiative to duck, I mean, we didn't know what was going on. So we all crouched down, some in their seats, but most of us just crouched down on the floor.

"Then the driver came on the line and said he didn't know what was going on, but that we couldn't stop at Vauxhall, the next stop, and we'd go to Pimlico."

"Everyone on the train was pretty calm and quiet, you could see that everyone was totally shell-shocked, nobody knew what was going on.

"But by the time we got to Pimlico, some people were crying. One woman was absolutely wailing, I think they had actually seen or heard gunshots.

"Someone said they saw a man running away, someone else said they had shot the man five times."

At Pimlico station, Paul Irving, the station florist, described the scene when the first train came in after the shooting two stops at Stockwell, two stops down the Victoria line.

He said: "A couple of women were coming up and they were crying. And I saw other people coming up and I thought this is crazy, what's going on?

"And then the station manager said to me, look at these four and there were four tourists and they had blood spattered on their shirts.

"I thought, 'How mad is that? That's absolute madness!'"

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