LONDON TERROR
Warning missed as innocents crushed
HEAVILY armed police last night were carrying out raids at multiple properties in England’s West Midlands, seeking information about the attacker who killed a police officer and two innocent pedestrians in a terrorist attack that struck the heart of London.
Officers arrested seven people in the London and Birmingham operations, raiding six properties after the bloody rampage by an Islamic extremist outside the famous parliament at Westminster.
An Australian woman is among more than 40 people injured in the terror attack, in which four people died, including the attacker.
Those killed included Police Constable Keith Palmer, 48, who was stabbed outside parliament, a woman in her mid-40s and a man in his mid-50s. Another 29 people were treated in hospital, with seven in a critical condition.
Patricia Neis-Beer, a German-born Australian resident from South Australia, was among those injured when the terrorist used a speeding car to mow down tourists along the Westminster Bridge before fatally stabbing unarmed PC Palmer at the entrance to Westminster.
The terrorist was gunned down by police near the landmark Big Ben clock tower and died a short time later.
Ms Neis-Beer, who has a 26-year-old son, Jordan, and a 19-year-old daughter Paige and who works in an organic market and cafe in Stirling in Adelaide, was one of those injured in the first mass-casualty terrorism attacks on British soil in more than a decade.
Her condition was not known last night.
Police have confirmed the death of PC Palmer, 48, who was stabbed multiple times.
The British media have also named mother of two Aysha Frade, 43, as a victim, saying she died on Westminster Bridge as she went to collect her children from school.
The attacks on the doorstep of democracy at Westminster shocked London, where authorities have been warning for months the threat posed by Islamic terrorism was “severe.’’
Police raided properties in the regional city of Birmingham, in the West Midlands, seeking information about the attacker and the car, apparently a rented Hyundai 4WD, which was used to murder pedestrians going about their business in central London.
West Midlands police would only confirm an operation was under way, but a witness told the media the attacker lived in a second-floor flat above a shop in Hagley Rd in the Bearwood area. “The man from London lived here,” the witness told media, adding officers had arrested three men at that scene.
The attacker, whose identity is known to police but being withheld, struck at 2.40pm on Wednesday, London time, when parliament was sitting and the Westminster district was teeming with tourists.
The man, aged in his 40s and of Asian appearance, which in the UK refers to people from the subcontinent, drove the car at high speeds from of Southbank north across the River Thames.
He crushed people along the footpath on the left-hand side of the bridge, then rammed through a fence near Big Ben before stabbing Constable Palmer multiple times with two large knives. He was then shot as he ran towards the Westminster entrance.
Confronting pictures emerged of injured victims lying across the footpaths, including one woman desperately clutching the arms of another
woman as blood streamed from the victim’s head.
An emotional Prime Minister Theresa May spoke outside 10 Downing Street, saying the location of the attack was “no accident’’ and the terrorist had committed “a sick and depraved’’ act. “The terrorists chose to strike at the heart of our capital city where all nationalities, religions and cultures come together to celebrate the values of liberty, democracy and freedom of speech,” she said.
Scotland Yard’s counterterrorism chief, Mark Rowley, said the working assumption was the attack was “Islamist related” and “inspired by international terrorism.’’