Sign in. It’s quick, free and it’s up to you.
An account is an optional way to support the work we do. Find out more.
SECURITY HAS BEEN increased at all army barracks in London as British counter-terrorism police investigate the murder of a man thought to be a soldier, who was beheaded on a busy London street by two men shouting Islamist slogans yesterday.
The attackers, wielding knives including a meat cleaver, carried out the attack a few hundred metres from the Royal Artillery Barracks in Woolwich, southeast London, then delivered an Islamist tirade to passers-by.
Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the “appalling crime”, adding: “There are strong indications that it is a terrorist incident.”
He cut short a visit to Paris to fly back for a meeting of the government’s emergency response committee, COBRA, which had already met in the hours following the attack.
Media reports citing witnesses said the men first ran over their victim in a car before finishing him off with the knives.
Encouraging passers-by to take photos
Eyewitnesses described how after the two men carried out their attack, they stayed at the scene, asking passers-by to photograph and film them.
Armed police shot and wounded the two attackers after they ran at officers, said witnesses. Both were being treated in hospital, said police.
Amateur footage of one of the men carrying a blood-stained knife and meat cleaver shows him saying: “We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you.”
The man, a black man dressed in a hooded jacket and black woolly hat, speaks in a London accent.
“We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth,” he says.
“I apologise that women have had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don’t care about you.” The footage, which some people may find distressing, can be seen here.
Reports said the man attacked was wearing a t-shirt bearing the logo of the British military charity Help for Heroes.
Several eyewitnesses said he had been decapitated.
Rapper Boya Dee, who witnessed the incident, wrote on his Twitter account: “Ohhhhh myyyy God!!!! I just see a man with his head chopped off right in front of my eyes!”
‘We want to start a war in London’
Ingrid Loyau-Kennett, 48, told the Daily Telegraph that when she asked the assailants why they had carried out the attack, one of them told her: “We want to start a war in London tonight”.
Around 250 members of the anti-Islamist English Defence League were involved in minor scuffles with police at Woolwich Arsenal train station, near the scene of the attack, before dispersing.
Police later arrested two people suspected of trying to carry out reprisals.
Officers arrested a 43-year-old man who was detained in Braintree, southeast England, after reportedly walking into a mosque with a knife.
They detained another man in nearby Gillingham on suspicion of racially aggravated criminal damage to a mosque, police said.
Cameron, speaking to journalists before flying back from Paris, called the attack “truly shocking”.
Speaking at a joint news conference with French President Francois Hollande, he added: “We’ve had this sort of attack before in our country and we never buckle in the face of them.
“People across Britain, people in every community, I believe, will utterly condemn this attack.”
Hollande, expressed solidarity with Britain, at “the cowardly killing of a British soldier”, but the British prime minister did not publicly confirm that the victim was a soldier.
(Image: Nick Ansell/PA)
Truly barbaric
In London, a local member of parliament, Nick Raynsford, said he understood the dead man had been a soldier. Security was reinforced at all army barracks in London following the incident.
The Muslim Council of Britain said the killers’ use of “Islamic slogans” indicated they were motivated by their faith.
A statement from the council said: “This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly. Our thoughts are with the victim and his family.”
Police were called at 2:20 pm to reports of one man being assaulted by two others.
Britain’s top policeman, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Bernard Hogan-Howe confirmed two men had been arrested following the “shocking and horrific” attack.
“We have launched a murder investigation, being led by the Counter Terrorism Command,” he added.
Police had met local community representatives and extra officers were patrolling the area, he said. Appealing for calm, he added: “The shock that we all feel at what has happened must bind us together.”
The United States condemned the attack.
“We stand with our UK allies in the face of such senseless violence,” State Department spokesman Patrick Ventrell said in a statement.
- © AFP 2013.
To embed this post, copy the code below on your site
Well done girls. Now back to the kitchen to cook for your menfolk. There’s a 3 week pile of ironing that’s built up too.
And don’t forget the dusting
Jasus 3 weeks. They may look after there man in the bedroom too.
Just because they play football doesn’t mean they’re all straight.
Wow Beachmaster what a way to crash the party.
Not like twitter to be overly sensitive. Is there anything factually incorrect about the tweet? No. This seemingly constant need to be offended is the thing I find most offensive these days!
It must be hell to be a professional comedian nowadays. Anything you say is judged in the same way that football newbies judged every slightly negative thing that Dunphy and Giles said during Italia ’90.
Well bacoxy, ask yourself why it’s never said about men…?
That’s always a good barometer of what’s PC and what’s not.
If it’s not a standard that’s applied to both genders then there is cause for annoyance.
But as a white male living in the western world you probably don’t have to consider these things.
Hope that helps for future reference and why people are annoyed.
You came dangerously close to mentioning White privilege there.
Isn’t sexism the treatment of or perception that women are in some way inferior to men? What’s sexist about calling a woman a mother, daughter or sister?
@beano – it’s the way they did it. It’s not just that it was sexist. It was also patronising. These women didn’t stop being mothers, partners or daughters when they put on the jersey. Plus, the men don’t get tweets from the FA saying the men are going back to being sons, partners and fathers.
Whenever I read an article about a twitter outrage fest it makes me hope WW3 kicks off sooner rather than later
Factually, the vast majority of mothers I know are heroes already. They don’t need to win a football title to become one. Not winning a football title doesn’t make them less of one. Part of the problem with society is undervaluing the work of a mother, or father for that matter, in the home. They are shaping future doctors, scientists, architects, builders, leaders, parents, and yeah, footballers of tomorrow.
Similar is said about men too Abbi, just not in football because they are viewed as obscenely wealthy professionals. It’s often mentioned about GAA players heading back to milk the cows, or there were similar things said about the Irish cricket team when they took the World Cup by storm and then had to head home to normal jobs. You can’t compare male and female footballers as though they are the same because of the insane money in the men’s game, but in sports against which women’s football would be comparable sentiments like this are pretty common.
Maybe the fact that while at the world cup representing their country they were still “wives, mothers and daughters” as women are capable of being more than one thing at any given time.
Once I finish this moderately successful post I will return to be a single childless loser. :(
Twitter needs to be killed. We would be much better without it.
It annoys me when an article is supplemented by a hape of meaningless tweets from folk I’ve never heard of.
Apparently it gives it “colour”. Lazy journalism in my opinion.
*supplemented with? Damn it anyway. Where’s Tap Solny when I need her?
As you comment using your Twitter account…
According to feminists, it is offensive to acknowledge that women are a separate gender. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
please do explain this comment. where did this information come from?
PC gone mad ;-)
You’re blaming the computer? I bet the FA wished they’d though of that.
The English football fans are funny. Coming third is a decent achievement but I wouldn’t call them heroes. They always over hype themselves.
In fairness if you take a step back and look we do the same, we’re still talking about Italia 90 where we drew four games and lost one, if our women’s team came third in a World Cup we’d probably be naming streets and bridges after the players.
We think the English hype is peculiar because we get to see it as outsiders due to the fact we watch so much English TV, they’re entitled to hype their own national team if they want to it’s their own media after all, who are we to say otherwise.
Twitter outrage is like cheering in a large crowd even though you don’t know what the crowd started cheering at…
Nothing offensive here ffs!!
Stop cursing please.
Gawd! How DARE people be mildly annoyed by a thing! What kind of world do we live in where people can express their opinion freely? When will it ever end? ;_;
When our lads come back from the Rugby world cup, they ll go back to being husbands partners and sons.
This just proves there will never be a shortage of people that get offended on other people’s behalf.
Thank God they have husbands, that’s all I can say.
Because they’re absolutely shit at football.
In terms of skill the women’s world cup is the equivalent of watching Scottish League 3 football.
And if anyone has ever been unfortunate enough to have watched a game from that division then you’ll know why the average attendance is about 3 and a half people.
I’d rather listen to Serena Williams grunting for 40 minutes (the average time span of her matches) than watch a ladies football game.
There’s easier ways to get brain damage.
I’ve a strong suspicion any one of those women would make absolute sh*t out of you on a soccer pitch.
My local pub team could thrash the England’s ladies team.
At closing time.
For God’s sake relax. Let’s remember the real issue here, women’s football is shockingly bad :)
Yawn, keyboard warriors are bored obviously
…says the one who’s bored…
“three lions on a skirt……..”
Western corporate feminism at its finest.
everone of them falls into at least one of those.
A lot of PC whackjobs who completely miss the point and don’t bother their hole to do some research.
political correctness gone mental , I want my masculinity back , whatever happened to Gary Cooper , the strong silent type.
Alex Scott though…
have your say