London: The lone attacker who carried out a deadly rampage in central London was a British-born man once investigated for possible extremist links, but was “not part of the current intelligence picture,” Britain’s prime minister said on Thursday.
British police named the man attacker as Khalid Masood, saying he had a string of criminal convictions but none for terrorism-related offences.
Masood, 52, was born in Kent to the southeast of London and had been most recently living in central England, London police said.
“Masood was not the subject of any current investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,” they said in a statement.
“However, he was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH (grievous bodily harm), possession of offensive weapons and public order offences.” He had not been convicted previously for any terrorism offences, they said.
In a statement to the House of Commons, May said that the assailant was born in Britain and was once investigated by security services “ in relations to concerns about violent extremism”
“He was a peripheral figure,” she added. “The case was historic. He was not part of the current intelligence picture. There was no prior intelligence of his intent or of the plot."
The car rental company Enterprise confirmed yesterday that the car used in the terror attack was owned by them and rented in Birmingham.
The company said in a statement that the car “used in the tragic attack in London yesterday (Wednesday) afternoon was one of ours.”
The company says an employee identified the vehicle after seeing the licence plate in an online image. The company checked and immediately contacted authorities.
Meanwhile, police held at least eight people in sweeps in London and Birmingham linked to the investigation.
Mark Rowley, the acting deputy police commissioner, said: “It is still our belief, which continues to be borne out by our investigation, that this attacker acted alone and was inspired by international terrorism.”
Speaking outside the Scotland Yard headquarters, Rowley said that four people had died, including two members of the public, a police officer, and the attacker.
On Wednesday, the police said that five people had died, but have since revised down that figure.
He also said that 29 people were being treated in hospital, with seven in critical condition.
“At this stage, we have no specific information about further threats to the public,” he said. A minute’s silence was observed in Parliament, Scotland Yard and London’s City Hall to honour the lives lost in the attack at 9:33am, in honour of slain police officer Keith Palmer’s shoulder number 933 on his uniform.
Tributes have been pouring in for Palmer, a 48-year-old husband and father who was unarmed at the time of the attack.
“He was a strong, professional public servant,” said the lawmaker James Cleverly in emotional speech in Parliament. Lawmakers also acknowledged Tobias Ellwood, a senior official at Foreign Office Minister who tried in vain to save Palmer’s life.
Michael Fallon, Britain’s Defence Secretary, said that the security arrangements at Parliament, which has a mix of armed and unarmed officers, would now be reviewed. But he stressed that that “Parliament cannot be hermetically sealed.”
Mother who was on way to pick up daughters from school among victims
Four people including an attacker died in the London terror attack outside the Houses of Parliament — two members of the public and a police officer.
Police said 40 were injured after the attacker ploughed a car along a pavement on a bridge before stabbing the police officer outside the parliament. Here is what we know about the victims so far:
Police officer
The police officer killed has been named as 48-year-old Keith Palmer, a husband and father who was part of the parliamentary protection force.
Tributes have poured in from across the country for Palmer, who was unarmed and was stabbed to death just inside the vehicle entrance gates to parliament.
Palmer had been in the police for 15 years.
He previously served in the British army alongside James Cleverly, now a Conservative MP, who tweeted: “A lovely man, a friend. I’m heart-broken.”
Cleverly paid an emotional tribute to his friend in the House of Commons and asked that he receive a posthumous award for his actions.
Female pedestrian
British police said one of the victims run down and killed by the attacker was a woman in her mid-40s.
A Spanish diplomatic source confirmed to AFP that she was a 43 year-old British citizen named Aysha Frade, whose mother was Spanish. Media reports said she was on her way to pick up her two daughters from school.
Rachel Borland, principal of DLD College London where Frade worked in the administration team said she was “highly regarded and loved by our students and by her colleagues”.
In the hours after the attack sowed confusion on heavily-trafficked Westminster Bridge, Colleen Anderson, a junior doctor at the nearby St Thomas’ Hospital, said she had confirmed the death of a woman at the scene.
British police said the third victim was a man in his mid-50s but provided no further details. However, a statement from the Mormon church issued on behalf of relatives says a Utah man was among those killed in a London attack and his wife was seriously injured.
Injured
Police said 29 of around 40 people wounded were treated in hospital. Seven remained in a “critical condition” yesterday.
Three French pupils, aged between 15 and 16, on a school trip to London were among those hurt.
Five South Korean tourists — four women and a man in their 50s and 60s — were also injured after being knocked to the ground by people trying to flee as the assailant mowed down pedestrians in a car, Seoul’s foreign ministry said. 12 Britons had been admitted to hospital as well as two Romanians, one German, one Pole, one Irish, one Chinese, one Italian, one American and two Greeks.
Earlier reports
London: Police have arrested eight people following the Westminster attack that left four dead, a senior officer said.
Acting Deputy Commissioner and Head of Counter Terrorism Mark Rowley was quoted in a BBC report that hundreds of detectives have worked through the night, carrying out searches at six addresses.
The eighth person was reportedly arrested by UK police on Thursday as part of the probe into the Westminster terror attack.
The latest:
- 4 dead
- 7 of those injured in critical condition
- 29 people had been treated in hospital
- 7 people arrested
- Search being conducted in Birmingham, London and other parts of the country
- Police believes the attacker acted alone
- UK Prime Minister May said the suspect is British-born and had once been investigated by MI5 over extremism fears
Those who died were a woman in her 40s, a man in his 50s, PC Keith Palmer and the attacker, he said.
Seven of the injured are still in hospital in a critical condition. A further 29 had been treated in hospital, Rowley added.
The attack unfolded on Wednesday across Westminster Bridge in the shadow of Big Ben, a towering landmark that draws tourists by the millions and stands over Britain’s Houses of Parliament — the very image of London.
The attacker’s car struck pedestrians on the bridge before crashing into the railings surrounding the heavily-guarded Houses of Parliament, sowing first shock, then panic, in the seat of British power.
The assailant then ran through the gates brandishing a knife and stabbed a 48-year-old policeman to death before being shot dead by another officer.
In the attack on Wednesday, a man drove a car along a pavement in Westminster knocking down pedestrians, leaving dozens injured.
He then stabbed a policeman and was shot dead by police in the grounds of Parliament.
In a statement made outside Scotland Yard, Rowley said: "The inquiries in Birmingham, London and other parts of the country are continuing. It is still our belief - which continues to be borne out by our investigation — that this attacker acted alone and was inspired by international terrorism.
"To be explicit, at this stage we have no specific information about further threats to the public."
It is was initially thought that three members of the public had been killed on Westminster Bridge, but Rowley referred to just two in his statement.
Sick and depraved
Prime Minister Theresa May described the attack as “sick and depraved” in a defiant address in which she affirmed parliament would meet as normal on Thursday.
Standing outside her Downing Street residence after an emergency cabinet meeting, May said Britain’s alert level would be kept unchanged.
“We will all move forward together, never giving in to terror and never allowing the voices of hate and evil to drive us apart,” said May, who was dressed in black.
The prime minister was in parliament at the time of the attack and was seen being ushered away in a silver car as what sounded like gunfire rang out, British media reported.
Britain’s top counter-terrorism officer Mark Rowley said the four victims included a policeman guarding parliament and three members of the public.
Rowley told journalists ‘terrorism is our assumption’.
He said investigators believe they know the identity of the assailant and police would be examining the scene of the attack through the night.
Queen Elizabeth II postponed her appearance on Thursday to open the new headquarters of London’s Metropolitan Police, where the force’s flag was flown at half-mast following the incident.
Brussels attack
The attack came a year to the day after Daesh extremists killed 32 people in twin bomb attacks in Brussels and after a series of deadly assaults in Europe that had hitherto spared Britain.
Parliament was locked down for several hours and hundreds of lawmakers and visitors were later evacuated to nearby Westminster Abbey and the Metropolitan Police headquarters.
An air ambulance flew in and police cordoned off a large area, while tourists on the London Eye, a popular visitor attraction, were stuck up to 135 metres in the air for more than an hour during the incident.
“I saw three bodies lying on the ground and a whole lot of police. It was pretty terrifying,” said Jack Hutchinson, 16, from the United States, who was stranded on the observation wheel with his parents.
Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood, whose brother Jonathan was killed in the 2002 Bali bombing, was pictured with his face smeared with blood helping to give first aid to the fatally wounded police officer.
‘We Are Not Afraid’
Britain’s last terror attack was the assassination of MP Jo Cox by a pro-Nazi sympathiser in her constituency in northern England.
The worst previous attack in London was in 2005 when four British suicide bombers inspired by Al Qaida attacked the transport system, killing 52 people.
Britain’s allies reacted with shock and vowed to stand with London in the fight against terror.
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”.
Lights on the Eiffel Tower in Paris were switched off at midnight in solidarity with victims of the attack.
The incident dominated Britain’s front pages, with The Times describing it as an “Assault on Westminster” while London’s Evening Standard carried the headline “Terror carnage at Westminster”.
International victims
French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault is due to travel to London on Thursday morning to visit three French pupils on a school trip who were among those hurt.
Five South Korean tourists were wounded, the Yonhap news agency reported, while the Romanian foreign ministry said two Romanians were also injured.
A Portuguese man was hurt, the country’s government said, while a seriously injured woman was rescued from the River Thames following the incident.
A doctor at nearby St Thomas’ Hospital said they were treating people with “catastrophic” injuries.
Press Association news agency photos believed to be of the attacker lying on an ambulance stretcher showed he was wearing black clothes and had a beard.
British lawmaker Mary Creagh told AFP there was “a real sense of panic” as the attack unfolded.
Pictures showed two people being attended to on the ground inside the vehicle entrance gates of parliament, with a knife visible on the cobblestones, while three shots were heard on video footage.
Timeline of previous terror attacks
Britain has been targeted anew by what authorities are calling a terrorist incident. A look at other attacks on the country in recent years:
March 22, 2017
An attacker stabs a police officer at Britain’s Parliament before being shot by police, while a vehicle ran over pedestrians on nearby Westminster Bridge at around the same time. One woman was killed, others injured.
June 2016
Far-right supporter Thomas Mair shot and killed British lawmaker Jo Cox who had campaigned for the UK to remain in the European Union, one week before Britain’s referendum on its EU membership. The attack shocked the country and focused attention on home-grown far-right extremism in Britain.
December 5, 2015
A Daesh-inspired taxi driver tried to behead a passenger in the east London Underground station of Leytonstone. Somali-born Muhiddin Mire was sent to a high-security mental hospital to serve a life sentence. The judge ruled that Mire had been motivated by events in Syria. The incident came days after Parliament approved British airstrikes on Daesh targets in Syria.
May 22, 2013
Two British-born, Al Qaida-inspired extremists stabbed off-duty soldier Lee Rigby to death on a busy south London street. The men ran Rigby down with their vehicle and then used a cleaver to hack him to death. Images of attacker Michael Adebolajo holding a butcher knife and cleaver with bloodied hands in the moments after killing shocked people around the world and sparked fears of extremism in Britain. Adebolajo and his accomplice were sentenced to life in prison.
June 2007
Two men were arrested after they drove a Jeep Cherokee into Glasgow Airport’s terminal in Scotland and set it ablaze. Authorities said the attack was linked to a failed car bombing a day before in London’s West End, where an ambulance crew outside a nightclub spotted smoke coming from a Mercedes that turned out to be rigged with explosives. A second Mercedes also filled with explosives was found hours later in an impound lot.
July 7, 2005
In the worst peacetime attack on Britain this century, four Al Qaida-inspired bombers blew themselves up on three subway trains and a bus in London, killing 52. Three of the bombers were British-born, all of Pakistani descent. The other emigrated from Jamaica.
