SUMMER HAZE TO BLOODY BEDLAM
Terrorist butchers tell victims in killing spree: “This is for Allah”
FOR most Londoners, it had been a perfect summer Saturday night.
Thousands of people were packed into the trendy bars, pubs and restaurants around the popular Borough Market and the tourist hotspot of London Bridge.
But the revelry was brutally shattered shortly after 10pm when a white van mounted the curb on the southern end of the bridge at high speed, ploughing down pedestrians — just 3km from Westminster Bridge, where a similar car atrocity took place in March — before three frenzied butchers jumped out of the crashed vehicle and began stabbing and slashing at anyone they could.
“This is for Allah,” the men shouted as they slashed at passers-by, a girl among them.
Nearby, patrons were drinking and eating — oblivious to the horror they were about to witness.
Some were cheering as they watched Real Madrid beat Juventus in the UEFA Champions League final in venues like Borough’s Ship Pub.
The historic region, which lies in the shadow of Europe’s tallest skyscraper The Shard, is a popular location for tourists and locals alike. But then it all changed. Adam President said he heard noises outside the Black and Blue restaurant and looked through the window of the restaurant, where he had been enjoying dinner with friends.
“There was a commotion outside. We thought there was a fight,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “We saw these blokes throwing glasses at the restaurant. Then we heard someone shout out ‘they’ve got knives’.”
Then three men with long knives entered the restaurant bringing the bloody chaos inside. People were screaming. Some ran, some lay on floor or on their seats.
And then, to his horror, Mr President said that he saw one of the men stab a man dressed in chef’s white clothes from behind.
“I saw him get stabbed. Blood was spurting out of his back,” he said.
“I thought ‘s..., we’ve got to get out here’.”
A second man was slashed with a knife and fell onto one of Mr President’s friends, Jag.
Standing in a bloodstained grey T-shirt, Jag recounted how he fell to the floor and the injured man landed on him.
“I don’t know who he was,” he said. “He was on me. I’m on the floor. He was on me.”
Just minutes earlier, he had also thought the incident was a brawl that had ballooned out of control but when he saw police enter the restaurant and then run, he said he also knew to run.
A woman in the same restaurant, Wendy Clarke, said she was separated from her daughter Emma, who she said later phoned her in distress.
“My daughter said ‘mum, I thought we were going to die’,” the upset woman said.
Ms Clarke said her daughter hid in the kitchen and heard a police officer trying to get treatment for someone who had been injured.
Another man in the steakhouse, Paul Clarke, said he heard what he thought were gunshots outside before the men ran in.
The group all fled the restaurant and ran into a nearby pub, where bouncers locked the doors and told them to lie on the floor.
But the horror continued. In the pub, Mr President said he saw a man with knife wounds lying on the floor outside the toilet. People were treating the man, who was conscious, he said.
Police were also filmed storming into the Katzenjammers bar in Borough Market, ordering its patrons on to the floor.
“Get down! Get down!” an officer shouted.
Alex Shellum, a witness at The Mudlark pub under London Bridge, told the Sun newspaper that he watched as a woman came into the pub begging for help after her throat had been cut.
Other eyewitnesses told similar stories of men with long knives attacking people on the street after leaving the van outside The Sun newspaper’s London offices, and of seeing bodies “strewn on the ground”.
Other witnesses also reported seeing two men stabbing people outside Roast restaurant in nearby Borough market.
“The guy with the knife was killing two people,” a chef from another restaurant told The Guardian.
“We were shouting ‘stop, stop’ and people threw chairs at them. Police came and shot straight away.”
Owen Evans, 39, who was in The Wheatsheaf pub near Borough Market, said a wave of about 30 people ran into the venue and then he heard shooting outside.
He said that one person had been injured, he thought by gunfire, and people nearby started shouting, “he’s f...ing bleeding to death, we need a doctor”.
After being locked in the pub for a while, a policeman told everyone to run.
Police quickly closed roads and set up roadblocks streets away around the site of the attacks. Sirens wailed and helicopters swooped overhead as streams of police vans and fire engines arrived at the scene.
Special forces police clad in black and armed with machineguns ran into the cordoned-off area with dogs.
Some people who appeared to have escaped physical injury but were clearly distraught were wrapped in emergency foil blankets as they stumbled away from the scene. At one point, a group of about 40 people were let out of the cordoned area near London Bridge station.
They were forced to stand on the side of the road, while police ordered them to hold their hands on their heads and lead a sniffer dog through the crowd.
Several blasts, believed to be controlled detonations, could be heard from within the closed-off area in the early hours of the morning.