A TUBE worker who helped at the scene of the Kings Cross bombing on July 7 2005 told an inquest a man he believes to be the bomber spoke to him the same morning.

Jermaine Lindsay was one of four Islamic extremists to detonate bombs on London's public transport network during rush hour that day, killing 52 people between them.

Fifteen people from Barnet, Wembley, Borehamwood and Haringey were among the 26 killed in Lindsay's attack at 8.49am just as a Piccadilly Line train left Kings Cross station.

Today Faiz Patel, who was working on the ticket gates that morning, told the hearings at the Royal Courts of Justice how a man matching Lindsay's description approached him asking to speak to the station manager about “something important”.

He went to get the station manager, but when he returned to the ticket barrier the man had disappeared.

He said officers had never asked him to identify the man who approached him that morning on CCTV images from the ticket barriers.

Mr Patel also said how he alerted the control room at the station to the gravity of the situation when told by a passenger walking back to the station from the train there were “fatalities”.

He said: “One particular customer made a point quite angrily that there were fatalities in the tunnel. That was the first anyone had heard of it on the platform.”

He informed a supervisor on the platform, but said he appeard “reluctant” to inform the control centre, so radioed it through himself, asking for emergency crews based at the top of escalators to be sent down to assist.

Mr Patel added: “The first emergency services arrived at about 9.20am as a direct result of when I mentioned the fatalities.

“It was as if the cavalry had arrived.”

When asked by Gareth Patterson, representing some of the bereaved families, about the availability of first aid equipment he replied some kits were “locked” in the station supervisors office.

After the incident he said he acted as a runner until just after midday, relaying information from the train to the platforms as no one had radios that worked in the tunnels.

He added: “I did not know it had been a bomb until I got up to the supervisor's office and watched the news.”

The station, which was overcrowded because of earlier problems on the trains, was already braced for an evacuation, he added, because of the number of passengers.

Earlier, Harpenden resident Janice Stephenson told the hearing how she had seen Tavistock Square bus bomber Hasib Hussain sitting on the northbound Northern Line platform at Kings Cross at about 8.45am.

She said he had stuck in her mind as she had almost walked into him as he was sat forward with his elbows on his knees, and had recognised him from photographs released after the bombers had been identified.

Officers believe Hussain had forgotten his batteries to detonate his device and had to buy another, which is why he attacked the bus an hour later instead of another Tube line.

The hearing, at the Royal Courts of Justice, is expected to last until the spring.