A teenager accused of the Parsons Green terror attack said his device was meant to burn, not explode.

Ahmed Hassan, 18, said he planned to get back to his native Iraq after planting it.

Hassan is accused of planting a homemade device full of 400g of the TATP explosive and shrapnel last September 15.

The bomb partially exploded at at about 8.20am, on the District line tube train in west London, injuring 30 passengers.

Hassan was arrested at Dover Eastern Docks the day after.

He said he had tested the TATP explosive in a Coca-Cola can on the kitchen table the day before leaving it on the tube.

Hassan said: "I was certain it wouldn't explode, it would just burn."

Hassan admitted leaving the device on the train but said he did not intend kill anyone.

He said: " The idea of killing another human being had never crossed my mind at all."

Asked by Tim Moloney, QC, defending, where he planned to then go, Hassan said: "My destination was Dover by that time.

"I was planning to cross to Europe, to France. My final destination was home."

The Old Bailey heard that Hassan had travelled across Europe and spent two months in the Jungle migrant camp in Calais before coming to Britain, aged 16.

After arriving in the UK, he eventually went to live with foster parents in Sunbury, Surrey.

Hassan had claimed to the Home Office that he had been kidnapped by the ISIS terror group but now admitted never having any contact with them.

This was because he came from a wealthy safe area of northern Iraq, in Kurdistan, and felt he had to make it up, the court heard.

He said: "My only reason I left my country was to further my studies. I didn't want to tell them the truth, because I wouldn't have got the leave to remain."

Hassan, a Sunni Muslim, said he was born in Baghdad, and has a 25-year-old brother still in Iraq.

His mother died when he was young and his father was killed in an explosion in Baghdad when Hassan was aged seven, the court heard.

He had tried getting into the UK a number of times before succeeding, the court heard.

Hassan, of Sunbury, denies attempted murder and causing an explosion likely to endanger life.

The trial continued with barristers starting their closing arguments today.