Xi condemns Westminster terror attack

Attacker named as Khalid Masood, probed by MI5

Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a message of condolence Thursday over a deadly terrorist attack in London in which a lone- wolf attacker killed three people and injured at least 40, including a Chinese tourist, before being shot dead by police.

Police have so far arrested seven people in the investigation, and 29 people are still being treated in hospital, seven of whom were in critical condition, Mark Rowley, Britain’s most senior counter- terrorism officer, was quoted by Reuters as saying on Thursday.

Police have named the attacker as Khalid Masood. He was 52, born in Kent and detectives believe he was most recently living in the West Midlands. Masood was also known by a number of aliases, police said in a statement.

He was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including possession of offensive weapons and public order offences.

In Xi’s message to Queen Elizabeth II, he strongly condemned the terrorist attack and mourned the victims. Xi stated in the message that terrorism is the common enemy of the international community. China firmly opposes all forms of terrorism, Xi wrote.

In a separate case, Belgian police on Thursday arrested a man after he tried to drive into a crowd at high speed in a shopping area of Antwerp, the city’s police chief said.

Guardian reported that at 11 am a car drove at pedestrians walking along the Meir, Antwerp’s largest shopping street, and “people had to jump to the side” to avoid the vehicle, said Serge Muyters, the Antwerp police

chief on Thursday.

The driver was arrested after a chase in the city centre. Muyters said the suspect was a man of north African origin.

Prosecutors said the man was a French national who lived in France.

In the London attack, a Chinese tourist was slightly injured, Hua Chunying, spokesperson for Chinese foreign ministry, said at a daily briefing.

Nouvelles D’europe newspaper reported that a female Chinese tourist was hit by the attacker’s car, resulting in a shoulder fracture and bruises.

The Chinese embassy in the UK reminded Chinese nationals of emergency preparedness and to pay close attention to the security situation in Britain as well as police alerts.

Many Chinese online users were enraged by the terrorist attack. “It reminds me of a 2014 terrorist attack at Kunming Railway Station in Southwest China’s Yunnan Province – the victims of both attacks are innocent civilians,” a Weibo user commented. A group of knifewielding Xinjiang separatists killed 31 civilians and injured 141 in that attack.

Islamist- related

British police said the attacker, who was British- born, sped across Westminster Bridge in a car, plowing into pedestrians along the way, then ran through the gates of the nearby parliament building and stabbed a policeman before being shot dead.

Authorities have said they are working on the assumption that the attack was Islamist- related. He had previously been investigated for suspected links to extremism.

The so- called Islamic State ( IS) group claims the man was a “soldier of the Islamic State.” It claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement issued by its Amaq news agency. But it gave no name or other details and it was not clear whether the attacker was directly connected to the group.

Britons have been shocked by the fact that the attacker was able to cause such mayhem in the heart of the capital equipped with nothing more sophisticated than a hired car and a knife.

“The police and agencies that we rely on for our security have forestalled a large number of these attacks in recent years, over a dozen last year,” said defense minister Michael Fallon.

“This kind of attack, this lone- wolf attack, using things from daily life, a vehicle, a knife, are much more difficult to forestall,” he told the BBC.

Rowley said there was a mix of nationalities among the dead but gave no details. The victims were the policeman, Palmer, and two members of the public, a woman in her mid- 40s and an American man from Utah in his mid- 50s. The fourth was the assailant, who died despite attempts to save him.

British Prime Minister Theresa May said on Wednesday the location of the attack was not an accident. She said any assault on the British values of liberty, democracy and freedom of speech was doomed to failure and Britons would not be divided by such acts.

But anti- immigration groups were quick to make links between immigration and the attack.

Leave. EU, a group that has campaigned for immigration to be severely restrained as part of Britain’s exit from the EU, accused mainstream politicians of facilitating acts of terror by failing to secure borders.