Inquest told Yorkshire bombers smiled and laughed as they set out to bring mass murder to nation's capital

A LIGHT sleeper unknowingly witnessed the beginning of the July 7 bombers’ fateful journey from Yorkshire to London after she was woken by a noise near her home.

Sylvia Waugh looked out of her bedroom window at about 4am to find six Asian men leaving a ground-floor flat in Alexandra Grove, Leeds.

Half the group got into a light blue Nissan Micra; the others departed in a mystery white saloon car, which has never been traced.

Within six hours, the three men in the Nissan – Mohammed Sidique Khan, 30, Shehzad Tanweer, 22, and Hasib Hussain, 18 – were dead after blowing themselves up on London’s transport network.

The flat they had left was later discovered to be the bomb factory where they made their deadly explosives.

The July 7 inquests, which resumed yesterday, heard that CCTV footage showed a light blue car, believed to be the Nissan, passing through the Hyde Park area of Leeds on its way south shortly before 4am.

About an hour later, the car was captured on another CCTV camera at Woodall Services on the M1 near Sheffield.

At about 6.50am the three reached Luton railway station and parked alongside the Fiat Brava of their co-conspirator, 19-year-old Jermaine Lindsay, who had been waiting for them.

A parking attendant is expected to tell the inquest that he saw Lindsay sleeping in his car earlier that morning. He gave Lindsay a ticket, but did not wake him for fear of being attacked.

The four terrorists then opened their car boots, put on heavy rucksacks and headed to the train platform, having bought day return tickets to the capital.

They boarded the 7.23am Bedford to Brighton train. A barrister travelling on the service would later tell police the men were “smiling and laughing and generally relaxed”.

The train arrived at King’s Cross at 8.23am – 24 minutes late – and the four bombers disembarked, walked along the platform and separated to carry out their bloody attacks.

A commuter at King’s Cross later told police that he saw some Asian men wearing rucksacks at about this time. “They appeared happy,” he said, “almost euphoric”.

Tanweer boarded an eastbound Circle Line train via Liverpool Street. It left King’s Cross at about 8.30am and departed Liverpool Street at 8.48am.

A minute later, his rucksack exploded and smoke billowed out of the tunnel between Liverpool Street and Aldgate.

Counsel to the inquests Hugo Keith QC told the hearing that Westminster may have been his intended target.

A piece of paper which was recovered from inside Lindsay’s passport mentioned journey times to Paddington, Bond Street and Westminster.

It is believed Tanweer would have reached Westminster had the train from Luton not been delayed.

Khan’s bomb exploded near Edgware Road underground station at almost exactly the same time as Tanweer’s. He had boarded a westbound Circle Line train which left King’s Cross at about 8.42am.

Lindsay’s bomb detonated on a southbound Piccadilly Line train shortly after leaving King’s Cross at 8.48am.

The inquests heard that his intended target may have been South Kensington, one of the locations the bombers had visited during a reconnaissance trip to the capital on June 28.

Hussain’s bomb detonated on the number 30 bus at Tavistock Square at 9.47am – almost an hour after the other attacks.

It was suggested that he might have experienced technical problems, as he tried to call his co-conspirators six times after 8.58am and apparently bought a 9-volt battery from a WH Smith store to replace a faulty component in his device.

Police believe that, after wandering in the vicinity of King’s Cross, Hussain took the number 91 bus from Gray’s Inn Road to Euston, where he boarded the number 30.

Mr Keith said: “From the damage wrought, forensic investigators concluded that each of the bombs consisted of several kilogrammes of high explosives.

“There were no traces of recognised high explosives – that is to say, the sort of high explosives that forensic investigators are accustomed to seeing.”

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