Men demanded driver’s car keys
AN ACTIVE terror plot has been foiled after police launched an armed raid in which a woman was shot and injured.
Six people were arrested after a team of specialist firearms officers stormed an address in Willesden, north west London, on Thursday night.
The activity came hours after officers detained a man carrying a bag of knives in Whitehall, close to Downing Street, as part of an unconnected investigation.
A woman in her 20s who was shot during the north London operation remains under police guard after being taken to hospital in a serious but stable condition.
Elite armed officers carried out a “specialist entry” into a terraced property in Harlesden Road shortly before 7pm on Thursday night.
Police fired CS gas into the address, which had been under observation as part of a current counter-terrorism operation.
Neighbours recalled hearing “at least six” shots and screaming as police entered the address.
Ruth Haile, who lives in the road, said she heard shots and saw an injured woman being treated.
Ms Haile said: “She shouted ‘Don’t touch me, my body, don’t touch my dress’.”
Alexandra Sabanov, a motherof-one who lived next door to the raided house, saw officers with “gas masks and snipers”.
“We heard ‘bang, bang, bang, bang’, went to the window and just saw a number of armed police just there with their guns pointing at our next-door neighbour’s window.”
She said the woman was “screaming really loud” and described her neighbours as a “standard Muslim couple” of whom she “never suspected anything at all”.
Giving an update on the two operations, Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said yesterday: “Due to these arrests that have been made yesterday, in both cases I believe that we have contained the threats that they posed.” Pressed on whether they had foiled an active plot, he replied: “Yes.”
Neighbour Alex Paton, 50, saw a woman “getting all cuffed up and put in a white suit”, and described seeing “all sorts of people running around”.
“There was coppers and masked men with guns and there was a guy running down the road with a gas mask and a machine gun,” he added.
Another resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said the woman was carried out of the house on a stretcher with bandages on her left arm and on the left side of her stomach.
“They brought down a woman, a lady, in a black scarf, a black burka,” he added.
“Then on the road, close to our house, we saw she had been shot – the paramedics and ambulances that were there, they stripped off her clothing to get access to the wounded areas.”
He said the family who live at the house are from Somalia.
Maxine McKenzie, who lives up the road, saw the woman being taken away in an ambulance.
The 48-year-old said: “A woman was being led away so she was led down the street... she was then restrained, they put restraints on her behind her back, and took her off.
“Then we saw the injured person being taken out of the house on a stretcher and being put into an ambulance.”
Police are investigating after two men stopped a pick-up truck and demanded the driver’s keys.
The men – one from a red Ford Transit pick-up with green sides and the other who was a passenger in a grey Ford Transit van – allegedly got out and approached the 66-yearold victim in a Mitsubishi Animal truck on Atwick Road in Hornsea on Tuesday afternoon.
He refused to hand over the keys and after a struggle the pair returned to their vehicles and left the scene. The driver of the grey van had stayed in the van.