LONDON - A brutal attack in broad daylight near a military barracks in London left one man dead and two suspects hospitalized Wednesday after police shot them. British Prime Minister David Cameron said the attack appeared to be terror related.
The attack occurred in the southeast London neighborhood of Woolwich, just a few blocks from the Royal Artillery Barracks, about 2:20 p.m. London time.
Witnesses called police to say two men carrying various weapons, including machetes and possibly a firearm, had attacked a young man in Woolwich. Unconfirmed reports said the attackers used a car to hit the victim and knock him down before setting on him with bladed weapons.
One man was found dead and two men were shot by police and taken to separate London hospitals, Commander Simon Letchford said. One of those hospitalized was in serious condition, according to London Ambulance Service.
A number of weapons - including butcher knives - could be seen on the blood-spattered street.
Two U.K. government officials who had been briefed on the attack said it appeared to have been motivated by radical Islam. They spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation.
French President Francois Hollande, speaking at a news conference in Paris with Cameron, said a British soldier was the slaying victim. Cameron didn’t immediately confirm that fact, but the Britain’s Ministry of Defense said it was urgently investigating if a U.K. soldier was involved.
One British broadcaster ran video footage of what appeared to be one of the attackers, his hands covered in blood, making political statements about “an eye for an eye” to an unknown cameraman as a body lay behind him on the ground.
The footage - obtained by ITV news - showed a man in a dark jacket and knit cap walking toward a camera, clutching a meat cleaver and a knife in what appear to be bloodied hands. “Your people will never be safe,” he said in a British accent. “Remove your government, they don’t care about you.”
He then apologized in English for the women passers-by who “have had to witness this” attack, saying that “in our land our women have to see the same.”
He gave no indication what that land was.
“We must fight them as they fight us,” the man told the camera as people milled around behind him. The camera then panned away to show a body behind the man.
News reports said at least one of the attackers shouted, “God is great!” in Arabic while assaulting the victim.
Cameron said there were “strong indications” it was a terrorist incident.
“We have suffered these attacks before, we have always beaten them back,” Cameron said. “We will not be cowed, we will never buckle.”
The British Cabinet’s emergency committee immediately called a meeting and the prime minister’s office said security was stepped up at barracks across London. Cameron cut short his Paris trip to return to London, and his office said he would hold another emergency committee meeting today.
The barracks - which house a number of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and independent companies of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards - were the site of shooting events during the 2012 London Olympics.
London Mayor Boris Johnson called the attack “a sickening and unforgivable act of violence” but said it’s “far too early for us to draw conclusions.”
Home Secretary Theresa May was briefed by police and the director-general of MI5, the security service, before convening an emergency committee meeting that was also attended by Defense Secretary Philip Hammond. She briefed Cameron by phone as he traveled to Paris.
An eyewitness, Lauren Collins, said she was getting off a bus near where the attack occurred.
“I’ve seen a man laying dead in the road and a smashed-up car separate from him,” said Collins, 20. “There was a big group of policemen. I do know he was wearing a Help the Heroes T-shirt,” she said, referring to a charity set up to help injured British soldiers.
Fred Oyat,44, who lives in a high-rise near where the attack occurred, said he heard four gunshots and then went to the window.
“I saw one man lying there bleeding, another lying on the pavement being disarmed. A policeman was pointing a gun at him. A third man was lying further up the street … he was bleeding profusely,” Oyat said. “There were four knives on the ground - big kitchen knives. The knives were very bloody.”
The Independent Police Complaints Commission, which is called in when officers are involved in shootings, confirmed that it is investigating the attack.
Information for this article was contributed by Cassandra Vinograd and Paisley Dodds of The Associated Press; by Henry Chu of the Los Angeles Times; and by Robert Hutton, Lindsay Fortado, Jeremy Hodges, Ben Moshinsky and Mark Deen of Bloomberg News.
Front Section, Pages 7 on 05/23/2013