London’s worst terror attack in more than a decade left four people dead, including the assailant and the police officer he stabbed, and at least 20 injured.
The attack shut down Parliament, leaving hundreds of lawmakers and workers in lockdown for several hours. Prime Minister Theresa May was in the lobby of the House of Commons before she was whisked to safety in a Jaguar. She was to chair an emergency security meeting on Wednesday evening and has yet to make a statement.
A car crashed into a fence outside Parliament after running down pedestrians on Westminster Bridge. A man armed with a knife then ran through the gate and through security, assaulted a policeman and was shot. Among the fatalities were two people on the bridge. Three French schoolchildren were among those hurt.
“This is a day we planned for but hoped would never happen. Sadly, it’s now a reality,” Mark Rowley, national head of counter terrorism policing, told reporters. “We will continue to do all we can to protect the people of London.”
He said he “was satisfied” that there was just one attacker, who has yet to be identified and no group has claimed responsibility.
The BBC reported that the police officer who was killed died while being given mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Minister Tobias Ellwood was shown at the scene trying to resuscitate him. Grant Shapps, a Conservative lawmaker, tweeted that he was walking to the lower house to vote when he heard four gunshots and police ordered members of parliament to crawl to cover.
Tawhid Tanim, 28, a sales assistant who works near Parliament, described how he heard three gunshots and was told to run by police. “All I could hear was loud shots, gun shots — bang, bang, bang. People started running away. I could see a car had smashed the wall of Parliament,” he said. “Police were saying ‘move, move.”‘
The attack adds to the sense of turmoil in Britain, where political instability is already growing amid plans to start withdrawing from the European Union next week. It’s London’s biggest terrorist attack since the multiple bombing of the transport network in 2005, and strikes a symbolic — and highly fortified — site in the center of London.
The premier has yet to make an appearance. Her office in 10 Downing Street released a two-line statement sending condolences to the families of victims. May will chair an emergency meeting, dubbed COBRA, Wednesday evening.
The Metropolitan Police said about an hour after the attacks were reported that they are treating it as a “terrorist incident until we know otherwise.”
Images aired by Sky News and the BBC showed people on the bridge and on the sidewalk near Parliament lying on the ground being treated by medical staff. The police said it received reports of a person in the river.
It’s exactly a year since the worst terror attack in Belgium’s history, in which 32 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded at the Brussels airport and Maalbeek metro station, and a day after Britain joined the U.S. in unveiling new security measures banning laptops and iPads from flights from some Middle Eastern countries.
Britain’s last major terrorist attack was in July 2005, when four radical Islamists targeted morning rush hour, killing 52 civilians. More recently, in June 2016, Labour lawmaker Jo Cox was killed by a right-wing extremist, while in May 2013 a British soldier was stabbed to death outside his southwest London barracks by two men.
British police have arrested record numbers on suspected terrorist charges since the country’s terror threat was raised to its second-highest level in August 2014.
The Metropolitan Police said on its official Twitter account that it was called at about 2:40 p.m. to reports of an incident at Westminster Bridge. It initially described it as a “firearms” incident.
“The people of London will see extra police officers — both armed and unarmed — out on our streets,” Rowley said. “We can call on the support of the military should we need to.”
(c) 2017, Bloomberg ยท Thomas Penny, Tim Ross, Robert Hutton
