This afternoon, terrorists drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge at a reported 50 miles per hour. Five persons then jumped out and began stabbing bystanders. At around the same time, there was another stabbing incident at Borough Market that appears to be related. At least two people were killed (The Sun reports that there are seven fatalities).
Police apparently dropped several of the terrorists with gunfire, but at least two are still on the loose. Soldiers of the SAS have been deployed from their base at Hereford to join the search for the remaining attackers.
Concerning a motive, eyewitnesses report that, to the surprise of virtually no one, the gang of murderers were shouting “This is for Allah!” according to The Sun, and that they may have had explosives which were not triggered due to a timely response from the security services.
Witness Erick Siguenza told BBC News that one of the gang screamed “This is for Allah” as he went on his stabbing rampage.
Staff at a packed pub in London Bridge locked the doors as the gang tried to smash their way in. Witnesses saw one man stabbed in the chest five times.
The gang had metal canisters strapped to their chests and at least two were gunned down – believe killed – by armed police, witnesses said.
There were also reports of multiple explosions around the Borough Market, but these were apparently controlled explosions done by the security services (presumably of some of the explosives referenced above.)
The gun control crowd in this country always likes to pretend that, somehow, attacks that don’t involve firearms are somehow cleaner. Less violent. That’s the voice of people who’ve never seen a knife attack victim up close. According to the Telegraph:
Redmond Shannon, journalist, [says] that the violence was so extreme that witnesses he has spoken to are too traumatised to explain it.
One young man, he said, “told me that he saw a knife. He saw something happen which he said he couldn’t articulate. He was extremely traumatised. He said if it had been two minutes later it would have been him.”
That’s to be expected. Gunshot wounds seem positively clinical and sterile compared to the results of a knife attack in a way that belies any survival statistics between the two. I refer the interested reader to close quarters combat expert Steve Tarani’s book, Contact Weapons. (I shan’t reproduce any of his rather graphic pictures here, just be warned that this book is not exactly pleasant dinnertime reading.)
The Telegraph also reports that people are being evacuated from hotels, and that some tourists have been left scrambling trying to find accomodations now.
Look at that picture from The Sun: disoriented civilians being herded away from the scene of the attack. It’s the portrait of a disarmed people being slaughtered by terrorists while their government insists that they stay disarmed because it can protect them best.
And there’s this:
No mention of fighting. Just sit back and let us worry about your safety for you.
Have they no shame? Will people continue, still, to pretend in London that everything’s normal? Will some still do so in America?