Five dead including police officer, assailant in London attack: police

LONDON, March twenty two (Reuters) – The number or people who died in an attack close to Britain’s parliament on Wednesday has risen to five after the death of a third member of the public, police said.

Previously, the death toll had stood as four, including the attacker and a police officer.

Britain’s top counter-terrorism police officer Mark Rowley told reporters that police believed the attacker was inspired by Islamist-related terrorism. Rowley said police believed they knew the identity of the attacker but he declined to provide details.

Photos and tweets from the incident:

“The attack began when a car was driven over Westminster Bridge, hitting and injuring a number of members of the public, also including three police officers on their way back from a commendation ceremony,” Rowley said.

“A car then crashed near to parliament and at least one man, armed with a knife continued the attack and attempted to come in parliament.”

Reuters reporters who were inwards parliament at the time heard noisy bangs and shortly afterwards witnessed the knifeman and the stabbed policeman lounging on the ground in a courtyard just outside, within the gated perimeter of the parliamentary estate.

A Reuters photographer said he witnessed at least a dozen people injured on the bridge. His photographs showcased people lounging on the ground, some of them bleeding intensely and one under a bus.

A woman was pulled alive, but with serious injuries, from the Thames, the Port of London Authority said. The circumstances of her fall into the sea were unclear.

Victims being treated at the scene:

Three French schoolchildren aged fifteen or sixteen were among those injured in the attack, French officials said.

The attack took place on the very first anniversary of attacks by Islamist militants that killed thirty two people in Brussels.

PARLIAMENT SESSION SUSPENDED

“I just eyed a car go out of control and just go into pedestrians on the bridge,” eyewitness Bernadette Kerrigan told Sky News. She was on a tour bus on the bridge at the time.

“As we were going across the bridge, we eyed people lounging on the floor, they were obviously injured. I witnessed about ten people maybe. And then the emergency services began to arrive. Everyone was just running everywhere.”

The House of Commons, which was in session at the time, was instantaneously suspended and lawmakers were asked to stay inwards.

Prime Minister Theresa May was safe after the incident, a spokesman for her office said. He declined to say where May was when the attack took place.

Reactions from inwards UK Parliament during attack lockdown

Journalist Quentin Letts of the Daily Mail newspaper told LBC radio that he had witnessed the stabbing of the policeman and the shooting of the assailant from his office in the parliamentbuilding.

“He (the assailant) ran in through the open gates . He set about one of the policemen with what looked like a stick,” Letts said.

“The policeman fell over on the ground and it was fairly horrible to witness and then having done that, he disengaged and ran towards the House of Commons entrance used by MPs (members ofparliament) and got about twenty yards or so when two plain-clothed guys with guns shot him.”

Britain is on its second-highest alert level of “severe” meaning an attack by militants is considered very likely.

In May 2013, two British Islamists stabbed to death soldier Lee Rigby on a street in southeast London.

In July 2005, four British Islamists killed fifty two commuters and themselves in suicide bombings on the British capital’s transport system in what was London’s worst peacetime attack. (Extra reporting by Kylie Maclellan, Elizabeth Piper, Costas Pitas, Alistair Smout, Michael Holden, Kate Holton, Elisabeth O’Leary and London bureau, writing by Estelle Shirbon, editing by Stephen Addison, Mark Trevelyan and Dude Faulconbridge)

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