Random Surreal Thought of the Day

"Hmm, I think I left my trousers in the freezer..."

Londoners work to find the missing as city reopens for business

Police raised the death toll in London's terrorist attacks to 52 as the city returned to work Monday on the tube and bus network targeted by the bombers four days earlier.

Authorities said retrieving the bodies of victims killed in Thursday's rush-hour attacks continued to be a laborious process, with workers still pulling corpses from a mangled Underground train deep beneath the streets of the capital.

Prime Minister Tony Blair, addressing lawmakers for the first time since the bombings, denounced what he called a "murderous carnage of the innocent" and saying the evidence pointed to Islamic extremists.

Blair said no specific intelligence was available that might have helped authorities thwart the attacks, answering critics who have questioned the government's vigilance and readiness.

"Our country will not be defeated by such terror," he told the House of Commons. "We will pursue those responsible wherever they are and will not rest until they are identified and ... brought to justice."

Many travelers said they would defy the attackers by using public transportation as normal.

"I ... will not let the attacks put me off," said computer consultant Paul Williams, 42, as he prepared to board an underground train in central London. "As far as I am concerned, it is just a normal day at work."

Scotland Yard said Monday it had identified the first of the victims – Susan Levy, 53, of Hertfordshire, outside London. Later Monday, London's University College said one of its cleaning service employees, whom it identified as Gladys Wundowa, 51, also was among the dead.

Forensics experts have warned that it could take days or weeks to put names to the bodies, many of which were mangled in the blasts.

More than 70 feet below the streets, teams of workers in white suits and face masks to protect them from the dust dealt with sweltering heat and rats as they removed some of the bodies from the train wreckage in the tunnel between Russell Square and King's Cross.

It was unknown how many more bodies remained below, but searchers said conditions were unlike any they had encountered before.

With no official list of the victims published, relatives and friends continued their agonizing search for missing relatives.

In a chilling flashback to the aftermaths of the September 11, 2001 attacks and the Indian Ocean tsunami, loved ones trawled hospitals and streets desperately looking for information.

Flowers, notes and appeals for information were piled outside King's Cross station. "Barbarism will never kill freedom," read one note in French. "Madrid is with London," said another.

Police were opening a 24-hour reception center to provide information and support to families as investigators work to identify the victims. Authorities said they have received more than 100,000 calls about possible missing persons.

Among the missing pictured on the front pages of Britain's newspapers Saturday was 20-year-old devout Muslim Shahara Islam, who has not been seen since taking a District Line train towards her work at a north London bank.

She is believed to have been in the train hit by a blast near Liverpool Street station.

Shahara's uncle Nazmul Hasan told PA: "Her mother and father have fallen to pieces over this." Hasan branded the perpetrators of the attacks "inhuman."

Pictured alongside Islam in The Sun newspaper was Laura Webb, 29.

Said the Sun: "Two beautiful, decent women. One Christian. One Muslim. Both missing with dozens more. Pray for them all."

Webb would have been taking a train from King's Cross to Paddington, her boyfriend Chris Driver said.

"I just hope she may have knocked her head or something like that, and that she is somewhere being looked after," Driver told PA.

Flowers, notes and appeals for information were piled outside King's Cross station, where bodies were still trapped deep underground.

Karolina Gluck, 29, from Poland, said goodbye to boyfriend Richard Deer, 28, at 8:30 a.m. and has not been seen since, PA reported.

The office worker was traveling from Finsbury Park station to Russell Square for work. Her twin sister Magda said: "We are really worried. We don't know what's happened to her. The worst thing is waiting for a phone call."

Former tour guide Mike Matsushita, 37, originally from Vietnam, is also missing. Girlfriend Rosie Cowan, 27, a retail consultant for a travel company, told PA she was "trying to be optimistic" about what happened.

"Maybe he took off his jacket with his ID in it on the Tube," she said. "I am too young to become a grieving widow."

Miriam Hyman, in her 20s and from Finchley, north London, was feared by her father John, in his 70s, to have taken a bus from King's Cross. Friends posted notices at the station with her photograph.

Connie Law, 33, and her mother, Elena Law, 72, visited the Royal London Hospital in Whitechapel, east London, Saturday to look for a missing family friend Mihaela Otto, a dental technician, PA said.

She was thought to have been traveling on the Piccadilly Line between King's Cross and Russell Square on Thursday morning when one of the bombs went off.

Connie told PA: "Her family were called by her work to say she hadn't turned up. They tried to contact her on her mobile but haven't been able to. Her family are quite distraught."

They spoke to police at the hospital but there was no record of Otto being admitted. Law told PA: "There are a lot of people in the same situation. We're doing all that we can."

Shyanuja Parathasangary, 30, has not been seen by her parents since she left the home they share in Kensal Rise on Thursday morning to go to work, PA said.

Her mother, Ruth, said she boarded a train at Kensal Green at 8:55 a.m. and arrived at Euston station at 9:08 a.m. Mrs. Parathasangary believes her daughter may have then got on the No. 30 bus to take her to work at the Royal Mail postal offices. The bus that exploded was a No. 30.

"She did not say anything when she left, she just gave me a sweet smile," Mrs. Parathasangary said, adding she and her husband had visited five of the capital's hospitals desperately looking for their daughter.

Also among the missing was hair stylist Phil Beer, 22, who was with a friend who was injured in the Tube blast near King's Cross.

His sister Stacy, 24, said she and her parents were feeling "emotionally drained."

"It's the wait that's the worst," she said. "There is nothing we can do."

Friends and relatives who had mounted a desperate search for Martine Wright, 32, had mixed emotions when they finally found her, Saturday's Daily Mail newspaper and the BBC reported.

Sarah Jones and Jacqui Larcombe had wept as they handed out photos of their friend to passers-by, PA reported.

Wright, a marketing director who works at Tower Hill, failed to turn up for work and was feared to have been on the train that was bombed near Liverpool Street station.

Saturday's Mail reported that the friends had found her late on Friday night but she was in intensive care. The BBC said she was in critical condition.