Bus drivers to strike after knifing

Seven hundred bus workers, including drivers, were due to strike today after a colleague was slashed with a knife in a roadside attack.

Services are being halted in protest at rising levels of violence against bus drivers. The routes affected are 7, 18, 23, 27, 28, 31 and 295.

The latest victim, route 28 driver Francis Thomas, was slashed with a knife following a minor road accident on Chepstow Road yesterday with the driver of a black Saab. Mr Thomas, who is in his twenties, sustained wounds to his ribs.

At the First London bus depot in Westbourne Green, central London, one driver said staff are attacked "four times a day" and "threatened with guns and beaten up a regular basis".

The attacker is described as a black man in his mid-20s, he was about 5ft 10in tall and wearing a blue top, jeans and white trainers.