Low-key ceremony on 7/7 anniversary

8:20pm Sunday 6th July 2008

Three years after four bombs ripped through London's public transport network, killing 52 innocent people, survivors and relatives of victims are to remember the attacks on Monday.

The third anniversary of the July 7 2005 attacks will be marked with a low-key ceremony at the railway station where the four suicide bombers set out on their mission of terror.

London Mayor Boris Johnson will join Tessa Jowell, the Government minister for the capital, and transport chiefs to lay flowers outside King's Cross station at 8.50am, the time when the first three bombs went off.

Many people will make personal pilgrimages to the sites of the four blasts - Russell Square, Aldgate and Edgware Road Tube stations, and Tavistock Square.

There will also be a private meeting for survivors and families of victims who want to share their memories and reflections.

Many of those caught up in the bombings did not want to talk about the anniversary, saying they were trying to put what happened behind them.

Raj Babbra, 31, is using the occasion to premiere a film he has made about his ex-girlfriend and best friend, business analyst Benedetta Ciaccia, 30, who was killed in the Aldgate blast.

He hopes the 40-minute documentary - called 7/7: Life Without Benedetta - will bring home to people what it meant to lose a loved one so violently.

Mr Babbra, from south London, said: "I wanted to make viewers realise these aren't other people - this happened to people just like them. The fact that it didn't happen to them is more about luck than anything."

He admitted the first anniversary of the attacks was "extremely difficult" but said it had got easier with time.