LONDON – An assailant fatally stabbed a police officer at the gates to Britain’s Parliament compound Wednesday after plowing a vehicle through terrified pedestrians along a landmark bridge. The attacker was shot and killed by police, but not before claiming a total of three lives in what appeared to be Europe’s latest high-profile terrorist attack.
Personal details about the suspected attacker were not immediately made public. Police said the man traced a deadly path across the Westminster Bridge, running down people with an SUV, then ramming the vehicle into the fence encircling Parliament.
Finally, the attacker charged with a knife at officers stationed at the iron gates leading to the Parliament grounds, authorities said.
The dead and injured – numbering more than 20 people – were left scattered on some of London’s most famous streets.
Crumpled bodies lay on the Westminster Bridge over the River Thames, including at least two people killed. Outside Parliament, a Foreign Office minister – covered in the blood of the stabbed police officer – tried in vain to save his life.
Parliament chambers and offices were put on full lockdown for more than two hours and officials shut down the famous London Eye Ferris wheel, which overlooked the scene.
“This is a day that we planned for but hoped would never happen. Sadly it has now become a reality,” said the assistant Metropolitan Police commissioner, Mark Rowley, outside Scotland Yard’s headquarters.
As he spoke, the bells of Big Ben tolled six times to mark the hour.
Even before full details emerged, the apparent attacks and chaos were certain to raise security levels in London and other Western capitals and bring further scrutiny on counterterrorism measures.
“We are treating this as a terrorist incident until we know otherwise,” said a Twitter message from London Metropolitan Police.
The attack occurred on Parliament’s busiest day of the week, when the prime minister appears for her weekly questions session and the House of Commons is packed with visitors.
The Palace of Westminster, the ancient seat of the British Parliament, is surrounded by heavy security, with high walls, armed officers and metal detectors. But just outside the compound are busy roads packed with cars and pedestrians.
Britain has been on high alert for terrorist attacks for several years, with top security officials warning that a strike was all but inevitable. But until Wednesday, the country had been spared the sort of mass-casualty attacks that have afflicted France, Belgium and Germany in recent years.
David Lidington, a member of Parliament, said a police officer was stabbed and the suspected assailant was shot.
“Suddenly police cars drove down the road and locked it down. People threw themselves to the ground and hid behind trash cans, walls and in cafes. But the situation seemed to be under control fairly quickly,” said Lee Stevens, 34, who was standing outside Downing Street, about 500 yards from Parliament and near the offices of British Prime Minister Theresa May.
Among those providing emergency aid was Tobias Ellwood, a senior official at the Foreign Office and a British military veteran. Photos showed Ellwood’s face streaked with blood after supplying mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a police officer who had been stabbed just inside the gates of the Parliamentary compound.
French Prime Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that among those wounded in the vehicle attack were a group of French students
Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute think tank, said the rapid response suggested that police “were expecting that an attack was highly likely for some time.”
Images from the bridge showed a man dressed in a suit lying on his back, his legs splayed to either side, as pedestrians huddled around him administering first aid. The shoe was off his right foot, and blood stained the sidewalk beneath his left.
In another image, a woman with long blond hair and running shoes lay in a pool of blood on the bridge’s sidewalk. Blood stained the corner of her mouth as another pedestrian cradled her head.
Other photos showed people sitting on the sidewalk looking dazed amid broken glass and bits of automotive debris, with Big Ben looming beyond.
A spokesman for the Port of London Authority said a woman was pulled alive from the River Thames, and he confirmed reports that she had serious injuries.
As police investigated, much of the activity in the area around Westminster came to a standstill.
A nearby hospital was put on lockdown and the London Eye – the enormous Ferris wheel above the River Thames – was stopped and visitors were slowly let off hours later. Those who were locked inside the Eye’s capsules at the time of the attack were kept there, hovering above as emergency responders swarmed the scene below.
In a brief news conference just before 5 p.m. outside the nearby headquarters of Scotland Yard – London’s police force – a spokesman said he was “not going to speculate” on whether the incident was over.
Another witness, Kirsten Hurrell, 70, said she first heard the crash of a car hitting the fence outside parliament.
“I thought initially it was some kind of accident,” Hurrell told the Guardian newspaper. “Then I heard a couple of sharp noises. It could have been gunshots. I wasn’t sure.”
“There was a lot of steam from the car,” added Hurrell, who runs a newspaper kiosk in Parliament Square. “I thought it might explode.”
In Washington, State Department spokesman Mark Toner said the United States was “ready to assist in any way.”
The Department of Homeland Security said it was in “close contact with our British counterparts to monitor the tragic events and to support the ongoing investigation.” It noted that U.S. security threat levels remained unchanged.
A year ago to the day, attackers carried out three coordinated suicide bombings in Belgium, killing 32 civilians and injuring more than 300 others in two blasts at Brussels Airport and one at a metro station in the Belgian capital. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks, in which three perpetrators were also killed. Another bomb that failed to explode was found at the airport.
The attacks occurred shortly after Belgian police staged a series of raids targeting suspected terrorists. Those who carried out the bombings belonged to a cell that was involved in a series of gun and bomb attacks that killed 130 people in Paris in November 2015. The Islamic State also claimed responsibility for the Paris attacks.
As the aftermath of the attack unfolded in London, the Welsh Assembly and the Scottish Parliament both suspended their sessions. Scottish lawmakers had been due to debate legislation authorizing a new referendum on independence.
In July last year, a Tunisian resident of France perpetrated a new type of terrorist attack in the Riviera city of Nice, using a cargo truck to mow down revelers celebrating Bastille Day on a seaside promenade. Eighty-six people were killed and more than 400 injured before the driver was fatally shot by police. The Islamic State said the attacker was “a soldier” of the group who responded to its calls to use all means, including vehicles, to strike “behind enemy lines.”
The Nice attack apparently served as a template for another truck assault in December, when a Tunisian who had sought asylum in Germany plowed into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and injuring more than 50 others before fleeing. The attacker, who had pledged allegiance to the Islamic State’s leader, was later killed by Italian police in a shootout near Milan.
In October 2014, a Canadian of Libyan heritage went on a shooting spree at the Parliament building in Ottawa, killing a soldier on sentry duty and engaging in a shootout with parliamentary security guards in what police described as a terrorist act. The attacker was fatally shot at the scene.
(c) 2017, The Washington Post ยท Karla Adam, Rick Noack, Griff Witte
