At least three people were killed and 20 injured in a “terrorist” attack in the heart of London Wednesday when a man mowed down pedestrians on a bridge, then stabbed a police officer outside parliament before being shot dead. Police guarding the iconic House of Commons building shot the man but several people were left with “catastrophic” injuries on Westminster Bridge, a busy traffic junction popular with tourists with views of Big Ben. / AFP PHOTO /
LONDON, United Kingdom (AFP) — From a government minister trying to resuscitate a dying policeman to a woman rescued from the River Thames, here are some of the most dramatic moments from Wednesday’s Westminster attack.
Hero MP
Junior foreign minister Tobias Ellwood was pictured with blood on his face after trying in vain to save the policeman stabbed to death on the cobbled yard outside the Houses of Parliament.
“I tried to stem the flow of blood and give mouth-to-mouth (resuscitation) while waiting for the medics to arrive, but I think he had lost too much blood,” the former military officer was quoted by The Sun tabloid as saying.
“It is a huge tragedy, it really is.”
Fellow MPs and social media users hailed Ellwood, who served in Northern Ireland and Bosnia and remains an army reservist, as a hero for his response.
The attack was not the first time he was touched by terrorism, as his brother Jonathan was killed in the 2002 Bali bombing.
Woman pulled from the water
A woman with serious injuries was rescued from the River Thames near Westminster Bridge after the attack, in which a car ran into several pedestrians on the bridge adjoining the Houses of Parliament.
“She has been brought ashore and is undergoing urgent medical treatment. The working assumption is that she fell or jumped from the bridge,” said a spokesman for the Port of London Authority.
Steve Voake, 55, who saw the aftermath of the attack as he walked across the bridge, said he saw a body “lying in the water, with blood all around it”.
Police boats could be seen on either side of the bridge after the attack, their blue lights flashing, and all river traffic was halted.
Stranded in the air
Hundreds of people were stranded for several hours on the London Eye ferris wheel, which is located just across the river from parliament, after it stopped shortly after the attack.
The tourist attraction provided passengers with a birds-eye view of the carnage on Westminster Bridge below.
“I saw three bodies lying on the ground, and a whole lot of police. It was pretty terrifying,” said Jack Hutchinson, a 16-year-old visiting London with his parents from the US city of Boston.
A message urging passengers to be calm was played on loop in each of the pods, he told AFP, adding that “it was a little unnerving”.
– ‘A big knife’
Eyewitness Rick Longley said he was walking past parliament “and there was a loud bang and a guy, someone, crashed a car and took some pedestrians out”.
“A guy came past my right shoulder with a big knife and just started plunging it into the policeman,” he told the Press Association news agency.
“I have never seen anything like that. I just can’t believe what I just saw.”
© Agence France-Presse