ATTACK AT MOS UE
A van plowed into Muslim worshippers leaving a mosque in London just after midnight Monday, killing one person and injuring 10 in what authorities have labeled a terror attack.
A 48-year-old man was arrested after driving the white van onto a sidewalk outside the Finsbury Park Mosque on Seven Sisters Road — screaming afterward, “I’m going to kill all Muslims!”
“We don’t yet know the full details, but this was clearly a deliberate attack on innocent Londoners, many of whom were finishing prayers during the holy month of Ramadan,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan said on Facebook.
Metropolitan Police said one person died at the scene, while eight of the wounded where taken to hospitals in unknown condition. Two were treated at the scene.
“While this appears to be an attack on a particular community . . . it is also an assault on all our shared values of tolerance, freedom and respect,” Khan said.
The incident came just weeks after the June 3 London Bridge terrorist attack, in which three ISIS- linked extremists drove a van into a group of people before going on a deadly stabbing spree. Eight people were killed and 50 more were injured.
British counterterrorism police were investigating the mosque attack, and Prime Minister Theresa May has called a meeting of counterterror officials for Monday.
Mohammaed Kozbar, chairman of the Finsbury Park Mosque, said he believes the worshippers were targeted on purpose.
“It’s a terrorist attack,” he told The Sun. “Whoever did this, he did it to hurt people.”
Several people told the Telegraph that bystanders wrestled the suspect out of the van and pinned him to the ground until cops arrived.
“He was screaming,” one witness, Abdulrahman Saleh Alamoudi, told BuzzFeed News.
“He was saying, ‘I’m going to kill all Muslims! He was throwing punches all over.”
Footage posted online shows what appears to be a white male being held by police.
Witnesses told London’s LBC radio that the man had approached “slowly” in his van and “intentionally accelerated into” the crowd.