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Terror as tube passengers are stuck in a lift for 90 minutes on London Underground

Clara Amfo  replaced Fearne Cotton when she took-over the mid morning BBC Radio 1 show in 2015

TWO dozen terrified travellers were trapped inside a packed Tube station lift for an hour and a half after the door jammed shut.

Today one of the passengers locked inside described her terror and called the lift “a tragedy waiting to happen”.

 The lift, at Elephant and Castle Tube station, cut out just before it reached Tube level
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The lift, at Elephant and Castle Tube station, cut out just before it reached Tube levelCredit: Alamy

She also revealed how a little girl had to urinate in a plastic bag while another woman suffered a panic attack during the chaos.

The lift, at Elephant and Castle Tube station, cut out just before it reached the ground on the Tube level on Sunday evening.

“There was some kind of bump,” Ms Marusca Cirulli, from Eltham, told the as she described the moment the lift broke at around 6pm.

Staff arrived and tried to force open the emergency door on the side of the lift – but it was completely jammed.

“Their emergency door did not open as it was faulty and stuck,” she said.

“The lift was about two metres by two metres, it was quite packed in there and everybody was standing.

“It was stressful, one girl started to cry and had a panic attack. There was a doctor in the lift with us and they tried to calm her down. The rest of us, we got agitated.”

London Fire Brigade were called and at around 7.30pm and the passengers were freed from the lift.

But Ms Cirulli, 41,  said she is worried that it could happen again.

“That lift is a mortal trap and a tragedy waiting to happen," she said.

“If there would have been a fire or any other issue on the outside, we would have died like rats as nobody was able to free us.”

Another woman who was one of the 21 trapped, Emma Parker, said on Twitter: “It took an hour and 20 minutes and the ‘emergency door’ wouldn’t open. Bloody useless.”

The London Ambulance Service’s HART team said: “Tonight we attended a faulty lift full of people at Elephant and Castle.”

They said all passengers were safe and well.