 This is part and parcel of living in a big city.
From RT:
Multiple casualties are reported in London's Finsbury Park, where a vehicle drove into pedestrians, many of whom are believed to be Muslims coming out of the local mosque after prayers. Police have arrested one person and ambulances are on the scene.
London’s Metropolitan Police said in a statement that “there are a number of casualties being worked on at the scene” of the apparent attack, which took place at Seven Sisters Road.
A white van hit people close to the Finsbury Park Mosque. Multiple reports say the attacker is a white male.
A witness of the attack told Ruptly’s producer Jon Scammell that many of the people were “crushed … while they were having their coffee.” It coincided with the time of the night when Muslims are breaking their fast during the holy month of Ramadan.
Videos purporting to show the aftermath of the incident emerged on social media, in which several people could be seen lying motionless on the ground.
Twitter user Didier, who says he was at the scene at the time the incident unfolded, posted a video showing the arrest of a suspected attacker by police. Didier wrote that he saw at least seven people injured as a result of the attack, including three of them seriously.
The London Ambulance Service has so far said that they “sent a number of resources to an incident in Seven Sisters Road.”
Before the police arrived at the scene, bystanders reportedly apprehended the alleged attacker and pinned him to the ground.
Armed police arrived at the scene and inspected the van used in the attack. The scene has been cordoned off.
Some eyewitnesses report that the driver veered off the road into the crowd on purpose. The van “slowly and intentionally accelerated into a crowded cafe outside a mosque,” LBC cited an eyewitness as saying.
According to unconfirmed reports cited by the Evening Standard, a man wielding a knife came out of the van after it mounted the pavement and stabbed at least one person.
While police have not yet categorized the incident, the chairman of Finsbury Park mosque, Mohammed Kozbar, labelled it a “terrorist attack,” likening it to the recent terrorist attacks that rocked Manchester and London.
“Whoever did this, he did it to hurt people and it’s a terrorist attack,” Kozbar told the Sun newspaper.
Agitated bystanders approached police cordons, demanding that they disclose the known details and identity of the attacker, RT’s Ruptly agency’s live video feed showed. Officers replied that they “won’t release names,” and continued to call it a “serious, major incident.”
The London Fire Brigade reported that they are assisting the police and ambulance services in dealing with the incident.Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn tweeted he was “totally shocked at the incident at Finsbury Park tonight,” adding that his thoughts were “with those in the community affected by this awful event.” Corbyn has been the MP for the Islington North constituency, which includes Finsbury Park Mosque, since 1983.
A similar statement by Prime Minister Theresa May also called the attack “a terrible incident.”
“All my thoughts are with those who have been injured, their loved ones, and the emergency services on the scene,” May said. Here's better video of the suspect who was arrested.
The Daily Mail is saying two other suspects may have fled the scene.
The Finsbury Park Mosque has a long history of creating terrorists:
According to BBC, "Finsbury Park Mosque has long been synonymous with the worst fears about Islamist extremism in Britain. The mosque's new leadership have been struggling to reclaim it for the local community -- but that struggle raises questions about who runs mosques in Britain."
"The £8m Finsbury Park Mosque opened in 1988. And with one of the then biggest prayer halls in Britain, many Muslims regarded it as a major milestone," BBC wrote. "But by the late 1990s, amid the growth of radical Islamism, it had become a meeting place for extreme voices, including that of Abu Hamza."
The mosque was visited by "Kamel Bourgass, an Algerian man jailed for the murder of a policeman and an alleged ricin poison plot," BBC reported.
According to the Telegraph, "The Finsbury Park mosque was long known to have served as a clearing house for radical Muslims after Hamza arrived as imam in 1997. His hate-filled rants inspired attendees such as Richard Reid, the failed "shoe bomber", Zacarias Moussaoui, one of the 9/11 terror plotters, and Mohammed Sidique Khan, one of the four suicide bombers who blew themselves up on public transport in London on July 7, 2005."
Islington Gazette noted that the mosque "has been listed -- along with a handful of other British Muslim organisations -- on a database called World-Check, which is owned by news agency Thomson Reuters."
Added the newspaper, "The revelations came in a BBC Radio 4 documentary in which journalist Peter Oborne was given access to the list, and found Finsbury Park Mosque's classification was due to its previous affiliation with radical preacher Abu Hamza in the 1990s and its alleged links to the 7/7 London bombings and shoe bomb terrorist Richard Reid." If this is actually some sort of white revenge attack, we can be sure the media will push the hashtag #NotAllWhitePeople, fight to prevent any Anglophobic backlash and say the only way to respond to such attacks is to "carry on exactly as before."
Follow InformationLiberation on Twitter and Facebook.
|
