LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — London police on Thursday identified a British man as responsible for killing four people in a rampage outside parliament, as hundreds gathered for a candlelit vigil in the capital.
The Islamic State group claimed the assailant behind the deadliest attack on British soil in 12 years was one of its “soldiers” acting on a call to target countries in the United States-led coalition fighting the jihadists.
Police named him as Khalid Masood, 52, and said he had numerous convictions but none terrorism-related.
“(He) was not the subject of any investigations and there was no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack,” they said.
Hundreds of people meanwhile gathered in Trafalgar Square in central London for a vigil late Thursday led by Mayor Sadiq Khan.
“Londoners will never be cowed by terrorism,” said Khan, who lit a candle alongside Home Secretary Amber Rudd and Craig Mackey, the acting commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police.
The crowds brought messages of defiance, flags and flowers to the heavily-policed square and offered their condolences to officers who lost a colleague in the attack.
Naveed Mirza, a Muslim student, said he had received “overwhelming” support since the attack described by police as “Islamist-related terrorism”.
“We have come to say how, as Muslims, we unequivocally condemn all the violent actions that took place yesterday,” he told AFP.
“People have been coming to us, they have been very supportive telling us we should have nothing to fear,” Mirza added.
Britain’s top anti-terror officer Mark Rowley acknowledged that Muslim communities will “feel anxious” over fears of an Islamophobic backlash, and said police would work with community leaders to ensure protection.
In the central city of Birmingham, home to large South Asian and Muslim communities, Muhammad Afzal, the head of the central mosque, said the attacker’s motivations had nothing to do with true Islam.
Police said five men and three women arrested in overnight raids in Birmingham and London were being investigated “on suspicion of preparation of terrorist acts.”
Masood, reportedly a married father-of-three, rented the car in a town outside Birmingham used in the rampage.
He was described as “a nice guy” by Iwona Romek, a former neighbour who spoke to the Birmingham Mail.
First IS claim of British attack
The IS group said it was responsible, according to the Amaq propaganda agency, its first claim of an attack on British soil.
The latest attack had echoes of the atrocities in Nice and Berlin when trucks ploughed into crowds of people, killing 86 people in the French Riviera city in July and 12 at a market in the German capital in December.
The assault on Westminster was the deadliest in Britain since four suicide bombers killed 52 people on the city’s transport system in July 2005.
As the British flag flew at half-mast, lawmakers returned to “business as usual” in the surreal silence of an area in the heart of London normally thronged with tourists.
The United Nations Security Council observed a minute of silence on Thursday, while Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate was illuminated in the colors of the British flag.
A defiant Prime Minister Theresa May had told the reopened parliament that Britain would not be cowed by the attack on the very symbol of the country’s democracy.
“We are not afraid and our resolve will never waver in the face of terrorism,” May told a packed House of Commons, which stood for a minute’s silence in remembrance of the victims.
Just hours after she spoke, Belgian police arrested a man as he tried to drive into a crowd at high speed in a shopping area in the port city of Antwerp.
That was the third incident in a week in Europe after London and a weekend attack at Paris’s Orly airport, and came a day after the first anniversary of the Brussels suicide bombings that killed 32 people and were also claimed by IS.
Broad daylight attack
In his broad daylight attack, Masood mowed down pedestrians with a car along Westminster Bridge — a busy traffic route and popular tourist spot with views of parliament and the Big Ben clock tower.
He then rammed the railings outside parliament and jumped out of the car, fatally stabbing 48-year-old unarmed police officer Keith Palmer before being shot dead.
The other victims were a 43-year-old British woman, an American in his 50s, and a 75-year-old man who died of his injuries on Thursday evening.
French school children and foreign tourists were among 29 people treated in hospital.
Britain’s last terror attack was the 2016 assassination of MP Jo Cox by a pro-Nazi sympathizer shortly before the historic but deeply divisive June vote to leave the EU.
One of the victims was named as British citizen Aysha Frade. Media reports said she was on her way to pick up her two daughters, aged seven and nine, from school.
Kurt Cochran, from the United States, was named as the third victim by President Donald Trump, who called him a “great American.”
