Man killed in suspected terror attack in London

Two attackers with kitchen knives killed a man believed to be a soldier on a street on Wednesday in south-east London afternoon in a case that police were treating as a suspected terrorist attack.

Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe said officers from the counterterrorist unit were leading the investigation into the “shocking and horrific” slaying in Woolwich with two people arrested.

Prime Minister David Cameron, who was in Paris for a meeting with French President Francois Hollande, cut short the visit to return to London later on Wednesday. He called the incident “shocking” and ordered a crisis meeting to coordinate British government response.

The attackers shouted, “Allahu akbar” – Arabic for “God is great” – during the attack, a government source said.

In bystander video shown on ITV News, a man at the scene carried a large knife and cleaver with bloodied hands said, “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”

Parliament member Nick Raynsford said the victim was a British soldier stationed at a nearby barracks, but no other source confirmed that.

A witness identified only as James told LBC radio that the victim wore a T-shirt from a military charity and was attacked with knives like he was “a piece of meat”.

“They were hacking at him, chopping him, cutting him,” he said.

“These two guys were crazed. They were just animals. They dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road and left his body there.” After the attack, the two men paced around the scene waving knives and a gun, asking bystanders to take pictures of them “as if they wanted to be on TV or something,” the witness said.

Metropolitan Police Commander Simon Letchford said police responding to the scene shot and wounded the two suspects. Both were hospitalized, with one in serious condition, the BBC reported.

Britain had faced such attacks before and would “never buckle in the face of them,” Cameron said. People across Britain, “will utterly condemn this attack,” he said.

Home Secretary Theresa May led a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee, with another meeting planned for Thursday morning.

“The police and Security Service are establishing the full facts of this barbaric case, but there is a strong indication that it was an act of terrorism,” May said in a statement, adding that security had been increased at army barracks across London.

The Muslim Council of Britain called the attack “a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam, and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family.”

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