The day terror struck at the heart of British democracy
Outside the Commons, a knifeman kills an unarmed police officer. Yards away, MPs are locked into the chamber for their safety
IT WAS the terrorist attack that police and security services always feared, but hoped would never come. A man, dressed all in black, drove a car at 50mph the full length of Westminster Bridge, aiming deliberately at pedestrians and cyclists.
The bodies were scattered in his wake. One woman died after she was hit and thrown under the wheels of a bus; another woman was struck as she walked past a stand selling postcards to tourists. She lay on the ground under the shadow of Big Ben, blood pouring from the wound in her head and seeping into cracks in the pavement.
The driver of the Hyundai 4x4 then crashed the vehicle into the iron railings that surround the Palace of Westminster, hitting at least two more pedestrians. He leapt from the car and ran around the corner, brandishing a kitchen knife, eight inches long.
Hundreds of tourists and workers, panicked into a “stampede”, ran for their lives while, the attacker, now on foot, headed for Parliament Square and pushed past police officers at the barrier to New Palace Yard. Just within the entrance he slashed and stabbed at an unarmed policeman, PC Keith Palmer, who would later die of his wounds.
It was only then that the marauder was stopped in his tracks as, at just after 2.40pm, a plain clothes officer, possibly a minister’s personal bodyguard or a member of the security services, pulled out his pistol and fired two, maybe three, shots into the intruder’s chest.
Terror had struck at the very heart of Britain and its Government.
The Prime Minister, Theresa May, had been due to leave the House of Commons for the short drive to Downing Street when the attack happened.
Police said last night five were confirmed dead: the terrorist, the policeman and three people killed on the bridge. At least 40 more were injured, several of them critically. The death toll, it was feared, would rise.
“This is a day that we had planned for – that we all hoped would never happen – but sadly it is now a reality,” said Acting Deputy Commissioner, Mark Rowley, who is in overall charge of Britain’s Counter Terrorism Police.
Mrs May would later declare, in a speech just before 9pm on the steps of Downing Street: “We will never give in to terror; we will never allow hate and evil to drive us apart.” The carnage had begun a little over six hours earlier. “At first I thought the car had lost balance, but he was going in and coming back in a zig-zag, he did it about three times,” said Ismail Hassan, 45, who was riding his motorbike on Westminster Bridge when he saw the £30,000 grey Hyundai Santa Fe – registered in Chelmsford, Essex – career towards him. “When he got to the shop he started hitting people, driving into people. The car was hitting people on the pavement,” he said.
“The third time [he zig-zagged] there was a guy who collapsed in the middle of the road. He wasn’t moving at all. At first we didn’t know what was happening, it took less than 10 seconds.
“It was six or seven people injured that I saw with my own eyes.”
Mr Hassan attempted to hold people back as an ambulance was called. “I’m sickened, I don’t know what’s going on,” he said.
One victim was seen trapped under the rear wheel of a bus. A junior doctor later confirmed the worst. Colleen Anderson at St Thomas’ Hospital said a female pedestrian had died. “I confirmed one fatality. A woman. She was under the wheel of a bus. She died, confirmed her death at the scene.” Dr Anderson added: “There were people across the bridge. There were some with minor injuries, some catastrophic.”
Radek Sikorski, Poland’s former foreign minister and now a senior fellow at the Harvard Centre for European Studies, posted a video on Twitter showing people lying injured. The horrifying images were some of the first posted on the internet.
“I heard what I thought was just a collision and then I looked through the window of the taxi and [saw] someone down, obviously in great distress,” said Mr Sikorski. “Then I saw a second per- son down, and I started filming, then I saw three more people down, one of them bleeding profusely.”
Another eyewitness told of seeing a body floating “face down” in the Thames below. It wasn’t clear if the woman he had seen in the river had been hit by the car and tossed over the bridge or had jumped into the water to avoid being hit.
Another body could be seen lying at the foot of the stairwell that leads up to the bridge from the river footpath. The victim had either jumped or was flung on to the rain-soaked paving slabs below. It didn’t look like anything could help him.
Later, a white and blue scene of crime tent was pitched over the body and a stretcher brought to the scene. The victim would have been one of the first to be hit.
Back on the bridge, three French schoolboys on a trip to London had been critically injured.
“Three of us were hit, we don’t know if they are dead or not,” said the group’s teacher. “I cannot speak any more, I don’t know what to say.”
One of the group of 10 – a young teenage girl – sat and wept openly on a bench a few hundred yards from the scene of devastation and destruction.
She was wrapped in a foil blanket and being comforted by fellow pupils.
Martin Pearce, 32, filmed the aftermath. “There is blood everywhere,” he said.
“I don’t know why I’m crying but people have been shot or stabbed all over the place.”
In truth, what he had witnessed was the result of a car used as a weapon.
Police officers were also hit and injured. They had been walking along the bridge, having just come from a commendation ceremony. One of the
At just after 2.40pm the intruder was stopped in his tracks as an armed police officer shot him in the chest
‘This guy with a beard came over my shoulder, he got a huge knife and plunged it into the policeman’ ‘It’s something everyone has feared at one point ... people were calm. We were on our hands and knees but calm’
group, who was in his thirties, suffered a head injury. He was being treated last night at King’s College Hospital, south London. The hospital said it was treating eight patients in total, two of them critical.
After perhaps 10 seconds, the Hyundai had come to a halt just off the bridge; the driver, deliberately or otherwise, having crashed into the railings opposite parliamentary offices in Portcullis House.
Eyewitnesses had described how the bearded man, said to be of Asian appearance and in his forties, had then leapt from the car. But his attack was far from over. Rick Longley, 50, a health and safety manager from Tun- bridge Wells, Kent, said: “He got out the car. I was standing next to the policeman right at the entrance where Big Ben is right behind you.
“There was a car crash and all the crowd surged around the corner. I couldn’t work out why they were surging.
“But as the crowd surged, this guy with a beard came over my shoulder, brushed me and then he got a huge knife and was plunging it into the policeman. He was literally with a huge knife plunging it into this guy.”
Frazer Clarke, 25, said the attacker had two knives. “The police officer was stumbling and fell on the floor.”
Katie Marthini, who was on holiday and visiting Westminster, said: “We heard four shots. It was in the enclosure next to Big Ben. I was next to it. I didn’t see what happened next, it’s terrifying, we ran. Everyone was running.”
Jayne Wilkinson, another tourist, said: “We were taking photos of Big Ben and we saw all the people running towards us, and then there was an Asian guy in about his forties carrying a knife about seven or eight inches long,” she said.
“There were three shots fired, and then we crossed the road and looked over. The man was on the floor with blood. He had a lightweight jacket on, dark trousers and a shirt. He was running through those gates, towards Parliament, and the police were chasing.”
Her partner, David Turner, added: “There was a stampede of people running out. You saw the people and you thought ‘what the hell is going on’.”
Journalists had witnessed the events too.
Quentin Letts, The Daily Mail’s parliamentary sketch writer, said: “I saw a thick-set man in black clothes come through the gates ... he had something in his hand, it looked like a stick of some sort, and he was challenged by a couple of policemen in yellow jackets.
“And one of the yellow-jacketed policemen fell down and we could see the man in black moving his arm in a way that suggested he was stabbing or striking the yellow-jacketed policeman.”
He added: “As this attacker was running towards the entrance two plainclothed guys with guns shouted at him what sounded like a warning, he ignored it and they shot two or three times and he fell.”
With Pc Palmer on the ground, Tobias Ellwood, the foreign minister, attempted to save his life.
Mr Ellwood, whose brother died in the Bali bombing in 2002, gave PC Palmer mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and stemmed the blood flow by applying pressure to the wounds.
Mr Ellwood – himself a former soldier – remained with the injured officer awaiting paramedics. Blood covered his hand and his forehead. Inside Parliament, security services went into overdrive. Theresa May had been in the voting lobby and was bundled out of the Palace of Westminster and into a waiting silver Jaguar car.
Andrew Bridgen, the Conservative MP, saw Mrs May being led to safety. Mr Bridgen said: “We were just about to vote and I was behind the Prime Minister and the first time I realised something was happening was when her security detail came and spoke to the prime minister and she moved away very quickly.
“I’ve watched the Prime Minister moved away by the biggest plainclothed police officer I’ve ever seen. He put his arm around her and took her very quickly away.”
Grant Shapps MP described the ordeal. “It’s something everyone has feared at some point,” he said.
“I was walking through the cloisters and I hear four pops. The police have got their weapons drawn in the palace yard. An officer shouted ‘get down’ and we were on our hands and knees. I thought ‘OK this is it now’. I came back into the lobby.
“People were calm. We were on our hands and knees but calm.
“You can’t stop a lunatic in a car but it’s very important we carry on as usual.”
Parliament was put into lockdown. Rumours spread of a second assailant, a theory only knocked down by Scotland Yard several hours later.
One MP told how they were locked in the Commons lobby with the door closed shut with a wooden bolt when two police officers wearing balaclavas, with raised machine guns and wearing body armour, burst in, splintering the door. The MP said: “We thought they were the terrorists.”
As many as 600 ministers, MPs, researchers and journalists were kept locked in Westminster Hall, the cavernous chamber that is the entry point into the building proper.
Officers took details of those in the hall, many of whom will have witnessed the attack or its aftermath. Heidi Allen, the Conservative MP, said: “Hundreds of us are all locked in the chamber and voting lobbies, waiting for news.
“I believe the police are checking every corner and every room. Everyone is sitting around checking their phones, watching the TV and trying to find out what is going on and hoping the police officer and civilians are OK.
“I was under the colonnade, right at the arch by Speaker’s Court when the shots went off to my right and armed police ran towards me, pushing me into a doorway.”
Lord Jones, the former trade minister, said: “We have been surrounded by very heavily armed police. There were 1,000 of us in there. It was like wartime camaraderie, all tea and biccies.”
Outside the Palace of Westminster, the emergency services had gone to work, setting up makeshift treatment areas for the wounded. An air ambulance landed in Parliament Square.
Some 53 Year Six pupils from St John and St Francis School in Bridgwater, Somerset, had been on a trip to the Palace of Westminster.
To calm their nerves, the pupils, aged 10 and 11, began singing.
A member of school staff tweeted: “We are safe, happy and lightening the mood with a sing song.
“We’re all fine. We’ve all been sent to the central part of the Houses of Parliament. We’re all together and happy.”
A Labour councillor later tweeted: “Apparently there are schoolchildren singing songs in Parliament to lift people’s spirits. “How beautifully British.” It was a rare moment of humanity in a terrible, terrible day.