Singapore "Kena" Terrorist Attack! (Part 1)

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Being slow, I only started to read up about the simulated terrorist attack only 2 days later and what left the greatest impression in me is the pictures of the exercise... somehow I was thinking: what if this had been real? We all do have a responsibility to prevent such tragedies from happening, don't we?

OK, am going to simulate news coverage on the attack as well based on articles and resources found on the net... remember, what follows is not real. I am just using it to prove a point... that we must prevent such tragedies from happening... a picture is worth a thousand words...

Jan 8 2006: Black Sunday

Photo Source: Channel News Asia

Numbers have become meaningless as the authorities count the dead and struggle to revive the injured, but yesterday's 15 minutes of terror claimed at least 500 casualties.

In a series of coordinated attacks on the Republic's lifeline - its transport system - terrorists struck six times, using bombs planted on trains and buses to murder commuters in cold blood and unleashing a deadly chemical, suspected to be sarin gas, to snuff the life out of those escaping a blast at Dhoby Ghaut MRT station.

The toll could have been higher, but at least one suicide bomber was taken away for questioning after she was prevented from setting off her explosives at Raffles Place MRT station.

What began as a quiet morning became a Black Sunday over a nightmare 15 minutes.

At 6.30am, there were not many commuters on trains - mostly shift workers dragging their tired bodies back home, all-night party-goers and others on their way to Sunday Service.

Then a train pulling into Raffles Place MRT station ground to a sudden halt as a bomb exploded in its two middle carriages.

Screaming victims, some dripping with blood, tumbled out. They were the lucky ones. Others would never move again.

Station staff were just rushing to help the injured when a second bomb stopped a north-bound train in its tracks, 70 metres from the Marina Bay station. The enclosed tunnel multiplied the force of the blast.

A third bomb went off at 6.37am, 28m underground, at Dhoby Ghaut MRT station. And just as the commuters thought they had reached safety as they stepped onto the platform after making their way through a pitch-dark tunnel, a chemical agent - believed to be sarin gas, used in the Tokyo subway attacks in 1995 - was set off.

Many victims collapsed on the platform, crying for help as rescue workers made their way through the debris. Dhoby Ghaut accounted for half the total casualty count.

Casualties were reported at all bombsites.

Eyewitnesses at Plaza Singapura saw a convoy of nine Singapore Civil Defence Force vehicles pulling up to the Dhoby Ghaut station just six minutes after the chemical attack there.

Emergency responders were similarly despatched to all sites and by mid-morning, more than 2,000 personnel from various agencies were involved in a massive rescue and recovery operation.

Even as the strikes crippled train movement at 13 MRT stations, security on the roads was stepped up. The police are also sieving through surveillance footage captured at the five locations.

For every anxious parent demanding to know the whereabouts of his missing child, there was a weeping wife, waiting for news on a husband she was supposed to have met for breakfast.

Extracted from Channel News Asia: http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/singaporelocalnews/view/187240/1/.html