London police shoot attacker outside Parliament

UPDATE: Police have arrested nine people in connection with Wednesday’s terror attack in London. Investigators said they have amassed “massive amounts of computer data,” contacted thousands of witnesses, and learned the attacker, Khalid Masood, was born Adrian Russell Ajao in southern England in 1964. Masood, who was shot dead by police, drove his car into crowds of people on Westminster Bridge on Wednesday afternoon, killing two people before fatally stabbing a police officer at the Houses of Parliament. A fourth victim, 75-year-old Leslie Rhodes from south London, died in a hospital Thursday.

UPDATE (3/23/17, 12:12 p.m.): British police have identified the man who killed three people in London yesterday as 52-year-old Khalid Masood. Following the attack, officers raided locations in London and Birmingham, where Masood lived, and made eight arrests.

Police previously investigated Masood for links to Islamic extremism and determined he was not a major player. He also had unspecified criminal convictions. Police believe he acted alone and said they do not have reason to suspect other attacks are imminent.

But Birmingham is considered a hotbed for Islamic extremism, and many suspects in British terror attacks have roots in the city. Experts say thousands of extremists are known to live in the U.K., but only a fraction are under surveillance.

UPDATE (3/23/17, 10:30 a.m.): Islamic State claimed responsibility for yesterday’s attack in London that left four, including the assailant, dead.

In a message on its official Aamaq News Agency, ISIS claimed the attacker as one of its “soldiers” who “carried out the operation in response to calls for targeting citizens of the coalition” of countries fighting the group in Syria and Iraq.

British Prime Minister Theresa May described the attacker, who still hasn’t been identified, as a man born in England who had once been investigated for links to religious extremism. But she claimed it was wrong to describe the attack as motivated by “Islamic” extremism.

“It is Islamist terrorism,” she said. “It is a perversion of a great faith.”

ISIS extremists have launched dozens of attacks around the world in their bid to establish an Islamic caliphate in Iraq and Syria and provoke a “holy war” with the West. It has targeted Christians in the Middle East and Africa, as well as moderate Muslims. In the territories it controls, ISIS institutes a brutal form of sharia law.

After initially saying four people died, police raised the death toll last night to five, with at least 40 injured. Today they revised those numbers to four dead and nearly 30 injured. Those killed in yesterday’s attack include one police officer and two people who were on Westminster Bridge when the attacker plowed his SUV into a crowd of pedestrians and cyclists. One American, a man from Utah, is among the dead, and his wife suffered serious injuries. Officials now say 29 people required hospitalization, with seven in critical condition. The victims needing hospitalization came from 11 different countries: 12 Britons, three French, two Romanians, two Greeks, four South Koreans, and one each from Germany, Poland, Ireland, China, Italy, and the United States.

UPDATE (3/22/17, 7:24 p.m.): British authorities say the death toll from today’s terror attack in London has risen to five. According to London Metropolitan Police counter-terrorism chief Mark Rowley, the dead include one policeman (identified as Keith Palmer, 48), three civilians, and the attacker. He said an additional 40 people were wounded. Rowley added that police believe they know the identity of the attacker but would not reveal his name or other details of the attack, but he said Islamic extremism is suspected.

UPDATE (3/22/17, 2:25 p.m.): London police say just one man is responsible for the two attacks near Parliament this morning that left four people dead.

Before being shot by police, the unidentified attacker killed one officer and two civilians on Westminster Bridge. Another 20 people suffered injuries, some life-threatening.

The attacker is believed to have first plowed his car into a crowd of pedestrians and cyclists on the bridge before running up to the Parliament building, where he stabbed a police officer. Three high-school students from France are among the wounded. One injured woman had to be rescued from the Thames River after she fell from the bridge.

“We are satisfied at this stage that it looks like there was only one attacker,” said Mark Rowley, head of counterterrorism for London’s Metropolitan Police. “But it would be foolish to be overconfident early on.”

Police have not released any information on the attacker or speculated about a possible motive. But world leaders quickly denounced the incident as an act of terror.

“We are all concerned with terrorism,” French President François Hollande told reporters. “France, which has been struck so hard lately, knows what the British people are suffering today.”

UPDATE (3/22/17, 12:58 p.m.): One woman is dead and about a dozen others suffered injuries when an unidentified driver plowed his car into pedestrians and bicyclists on London’s Westminster Bridge.

The incident appears to have happened shortly before a man stabbed a police officer outside the nearby Parliament building, where members of the House of Commons were meeting. Police shot and killed the attacker.

It’s not clear yet whether the two incidents are related.

Police are treating the incident as a terror attack, launching a full counterterrorism investigation, although intelligence officials say it’s too early to be certain about a motive.

U.S. officials have warned Americans in London to stay away from the area.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the terror attack in Brussels that killed 32 people. European capitals have been on edge since Saturday, when a man claiming he wanted to “kill for Allah” tried to take a gun from a female soldier patrolling Orly Airport in Paris. Other soldiers shot and killed the man, and prosecutors have not said what role militant Islamic sympathies might have played in the man’s actions.

OUR EARLIER REPORT (3/22/17, 11:41 a.m.): British police shot and killed a man who stabbed an officer outside London’s Parliament building this morning.

Parliament remains on lockdown as investigators evaluate the situation.

Police also are responding to several “reports of further violent incidents in the vicinity,” according to David Lidington, leader of Britain’s House of Commons. One incident involved firearms near Westminster Bridge. Witnesses reported a car struck several pedestrians before plowing into a railing.

British intelligence officials say it’s too early to determine whether the incidents are terror related. Police say they are treating it as an act of terrorism until evidence proves otherwise.