THE moment the window of a crowded bus smashed, showering passengers with broken glass, was "like a bomb going off".

Shop worker Dominic Bamber was on the number five bus on Huntington Road just after 9.30 this morning. He has described the loud explosion he and other passengers heard when a temporary bus stop sign smashed a front window on the bus.

Dominic, 31, said: "I was on my way to a doctor's appointment. The bus was packed, and I was standing near the luggage racks with two ladies.

"There was a temporary bus stop, because there's some resurfacing going on on the pavement, but the sign was not on the kerb properly and it got stuck in the wheel. When the bus went to move off the sign lifted up and came through the window. It was like a bomb going off, glass went flying."

Dominic and the two women standing near him were covered in fragments of broken glass, but two little girls nearby were protected by their mother and other passengers.

The three were taken to A & E, and Dominic spent hours in hospital and had to have a local anaesthetic while doctors and nurses removed glass from his eye.

"I am fine now, a bit shaken, but the swelling in my eye is going down," he added.

After the accident Dominic said many passengers did not know what had caused the broken window, and were left shocked and stunned by the noise.

"At first I thought someone had thrown a brick at the window.

"It was a full bus, everyone was asking what had happened but they all made sure the little girls were OK, and we were all alright."

A spokesman for bus company First York said no one had been seriously injured and they were investigating the incident.