PRIME Minister Tony Blair interrupted the G8 conference in Scotland to make a statement about today's "barbaric" terrorist attacks in London.

Mr Blair said it was now "reasonably clear" that there had been a series of terrorist attacks to coincide with the start of the summit of world leaders in Scotland.

Showing the strains of the morning's events the Prime Minister said: "Our thoughts and prayers are of course with the victims and their families.

"It is important that those engaged it terrorism realise that our determination, our values and our way of life is greater than their determination to cause death and destruction to innocent people and a desire to impose extremism on the world.

"Whatever they do it is our determination that they will never succeed in destroying what we hold dear in this country and other civilised nations throughout the world."

Mr Blair added: "It is the will of all the leaders of the G8 that the meeting should continue in my absence, that we should continue to discuss the issues that we were going to discuss and reach the conclusions that we were going to reach.

"Each of the countries around that table have some experience of the effects of terrorism and all the leaders have, as they will indicate later, share our complete resolution to beat this terrorism.

"It is particularly barbaric that this has happened on a day when people are meeting to try to help the problems of poverty in Africa and the long-term problems of climate change.

"Just as this is reasonably clear that this is a terrorist attack it is also reasonably clear that it is designed and aimed to coincide with the opening of the G8."

Before boarding a military Chinook helicopter bound for London Mr Blair stood shoulder to shoulder with other world leaders to condemn the attacks for a second time.