Terror at the heart of power
BRITAIN: A knife-wielding man went on a deadly rampage in the heart of Britain’s seat of power yesterday, ploughing a car into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before stabbing a police officer to death inside the gates of Parliament.
Five people were killed, including the assailant, and 40 others were injured in what Prime Minister Theresa May condemned as a ‘‘sick and depraved terrorist attack’’.
MPs, lords, staff and visitors were locked down after the man was shot by police within the perimeter of Parliament, just metres from entrances to the building itself. He died, as did three pedestrians on the bridge and the police officer. Forty others wre injured.
A doctor who treated the wounded from the bridge said some had ‘‘catastrophic’' injuries. Three police officers, several French teenagers on a school trip, two Romanian tourists and five South Korean visitors were among the injured.
Police said they were treating the attack as terrorism. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Metropolitan Police counterterrorism chief Mark Rowley said police believed there was only one attacker, ‘‘but it would be foolish to be overconfident early on’'.
Islamist extremism was suspected in the attack, Rowley said, adding that authorities believed they knew the assailant’s identity but would not reveal it while the investigation was ongoing.
The threat level for international terrorism in the United Kingdom was already listed at severe, meaning an attack was ‘‘highly likely’'. Speaking outside 10 Downing St after chairing a meeting of the government’s emergency committee, COBRA, May said that level would not change.
She said attempts to defeat British values of democracy and freedom through terrorism would fail. Londoners and visitors ‘‘will all move forward together, never giving in to terror and never allowing the voices of hate and evil to drive us apart’’.
World leaders offered condol- ences, and in Paris, the lights of the Eiffel Tower were to be dimmed in solidarity with London.
London has been a target for terrorism many times over past decades. Yesterday was the anniversary of suicide bombings in the Brussels airport and subway that killed 32 people last year, and the latest events echoed recent vehicle attacks in Berlin and Nice.
In the House of Commons, deputy Speaker Lindsay Hoyle announced that the sitting was being suspended and told MPs not to leave. Parliament was locked down for several hours, and the adjoining Westminster Underground station was shuttered.
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, whose brother was killed in the Bali terror attack in 2002, performed first aid on the wounded police officer, who later died. The attacker lay about 10 metres away.
‘‘I tried to stem the flow of blood and give mouth to mouth while waiting for the medics to arrive, but I think he had lost too much blood,’' Ellwood said. ‘‘He had multiple wounds, under the arm and in the back.’'
The attack began when a driver in an SUV slammed into pedestrians on the bridge, which links Parliament to the south bank of the River Thames.
Former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski said he was in a car crossing the bridge when he heard ‘‘something like a car hitting metal sheet’' and then saw people lying on the pavement.
Ambulances arrived within minutes to treat people who lay scattered along the length of the bridge. Police said one injured woman was pulled from the river.
The car crashed into railings on the north side of the bridge, less than 200m from the entrance to Parliament. As people scattered in panic, witnesses saw a man holding a knife run towards the building.
‘‘A guy came past my right shoulder with a big knife and just started plunging it into the police- man,’’ said witness Rick Longley.
The attacker managed to get past a gate into Parliament’s fenced-in New Palace Yard, a cobbled courtyard in the shadow of the Big Ben clock tower.
Daily Mail journalist Quentin Letts said a man in black attacked the police officer before being shot two or three times as he tried to storm into the building.
‘‘Two plain-clothed guys with guns shouted at him what sounded like a warning. He ignored it,’' Letts told the BBC.
May was near the Commons at the time of the attack, and was quickly ushered away by security officers and driven back to Downing St.
The attack unfolded near some of the city’s most famous tourist sites, including the London Eye. It was halted after the attack, stranding visitors in the pods, with an aerial view of the attack scene.
British security forces say they have thwarted about 13 terror plots over the past four years, but in recent years the UK has largely been spared major international terror attacks such as the ones seen in Belgium and France. - AP
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