London Police: Eight Arrests over Westminster Attack

The suspect of a deadly attack outside the UK parliament in London was Britishborn, Prime Minister Theresa May said, as police arrested eight people after several overnight raids across the country.

In a statement to the House of Commons on Thursday, May said the attacker was once investigated by intelligence officers over concerns of “violent extremism”.

“He was a peripheral figure,” she said. “The case is historic, he was not part of the current intelligence picture.”

The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group claimed responsibility on Thursday for the attack. It said on its Aamaq website the attacker “carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition” of countries fighting ISIL in Syria and Iraq.

It was not possible for Al Jazeera to independently confirm the claim.

Some 40 people were wounded in the attack, 29 of whom were being treated in hospital, according to police. Seven were still in critical condition.

May said those wounded in the attack included 12 Britons, three French children, two Romanians, four South Koreans, two Greeks, and one each from Germany, Poland, Ireland, China, Italy and the United States.

Three police officers were also wounded.

The victims included Keith Palmer, a 48-year-old police officer who was stabbed to death, and two members of the public - a woman in her mid-40s and a man in his mid-50s.

The fourth dead was the attacker.

Earlier on Thursday, police said eight people had been arrested after raids on six homes in London, Birmingham and other parts of the country in their probe into the attack, in which a man ploughed into pedestrians in a car and then went on a stabbing spree before being shot dead.

“It is still our belief that the attacker acted alone was inspired by international terrorism,” Rowley said.

Al Jazeera’s Barnaby Phillips, reportin Leaders across the world condemned the attack, while lights on the Eiffel Tower in Paris were switched off at midnight in solidarity with victims of the attack.

US President Donald Trump and French President Francois Hollande both spoke to May and Chancellor Angela Merkel said Germany stood with Britons “against all forms of terrorism”.