“During the [Pakistani President Purvez] Musharraf era, al Qaeda used Pakistan to mount its most important raids into the West, a highly successful one being the London bombings of July 7, 2005. Four British citizens, three of whom were of Pakistani descent, blew themselves up on British mass-transit vehicles. Three blasts occurred in underground trains within fifty seconds of each other, shortly before nine in the morning, just at rush hour. A fourth hit a two-decker bus an hour later. Fifty-eight people were killed and more than seven hundred wounded. …Al Qaeda claimed credit for the London attack, described by [al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al] Zawahiri as a ‘slap in the face of the arrogant British crusaders.’ “
– Bruce Riedel, Deadly Embrace, Page 83