Islamic State fighter 'behind attack at London bridge'
LONDON, November 30, 2019
Islamic State said the London Bridge attack on Friday was carried out by one of its fighters, the group’s Amaq news agency reported on Saturday. The group did not provide any evidence.
It added that the attack was made in response to Islamic State calls to target countries that have been part of a coalition fighting the group.
British police on Friday shot dead a man wearing a fake suicide vest who stabbed two people to death in London and wounded three more before being wrestled to the ground by bystanders, in what the authorities called a terrorist attack.
He was identified as Usman Khan, 28, who had been earlier jailed over a terror plot, and had been released recently.
Khan launched the attack at a Cambridge University conference on prisoner rehabilitation and was shot dead by police after members of the public restrained him, reported BBC.
The police has released the identity of one of the people stabbed to death in Friday's attack as 25-year-old University of Cambridge graduate, Jack Merritt.
Merritt was one of two people killed in the attack by Khan, while the other was a woman.
Meanwhile, in a rare gesture, both Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn agreed a truce in election campaigning in the capital after the PM phoned the Labour leader in the wake of the London Bridge attack.
It came after Johnson rushed back from his West London constituency to hold emergency talks with police and his security officials in No10.
But in the chat with Corbyn last night, the pair “agreed that campaigning should resume tomorrow as a statement against those who wish to attack our democracy”, according to a read-out of the conversation.
Corbyn in his statement said: “We must remain united across all our communities.
“We cannot let our democratic process be derailed by acts of terror.”