Whitehall incident: Khalid Mohamed Omar Ali, 27, arrested on suspicion of attempting London terror attack

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy

A man arrested on suspicion of attempting a terror attack in Whitehall has been named as Khalid Mohamed Omar Ali.

The 27-year-old British national, who was born overseas but grew up in Tottenham, was stopped with a rucksack containing several knives on Thursday afternoon.

Ali was arrested on suspicion of the “the commission, preparation and instigation of acts of terrorism”, with three knives visible on the floor at the scene.

He had allegedly been carrying them in a black rucksack emblazoned with a Union Flag and the word “London” down Whitehall, just metres from Downing Street and Parliament, where a suspected Isis supporter killed five people in a car and knife rampage last month.

Ali is understood to have been under surveillance by MI5 and the police, who said he was stopped and searched on Thursday afternoon as part of an “ongoing counter-terrorism operation”.

“He had been travelling on the London Underground and we understand he had exited the Tube at St James’s Park station before walking in the direction of Whitehall and No 10,” a policing source told The Telegraph.

“At some stage an alert went out to all the teams in the area and the order was made to pick him up.”

Security services told staff in Parliament that police had been tipped off by Ali’s family, Sky News reported.

Neil Basu, the deputy assistant commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, said searches were carried out elsewhere in London related to the arrest, with the suspect remaining in custody.

“I want to reassure the public that our increased activity to combat terrorism over the last two years continues – both by police and security services,” he added.

“Activity continues around the clock to identify and stop these threats and we are making arrests on a near daily basis.”

In an unrelated operation on Thursday night, a woman was shot during a house raid in Willesden as police foiled an “active terror plot”.

Ruth Haile, who lives in the road, said she heard gunshots and saw an injured woman being treated.

“She shouted, ‘Don’t touch me, my body, don’t touch my dress’,” she recalled.

Alexandra Sabanov, a mother-of-one who lived next door to the raided house, saw officers with “gas masks and snipers”.

“We heard ‘bang, bang, bang, bang’, went to the window and just saw a number of armed police just there with their guns pointing at our next-door neighbour’s window.”

She said the woman was “screaming really loud” and described her neighbours as a “standard Muslim couple” of whom she “never suspected anything at all”.

Scotland Yard said the property had been under observation as part of the probe but an “armed entry was necessary due to the nature of the intelligence” and firearms officers deployed CS gas.

“During the course of that operation one of the subjects of that operation – a woman – was shot by police, she remains in hospital,” Mr Basu said, describing her condition as serious but stable.

“Due to these arrests that we have made, I believe that we have contained the threats that they posed.”

A total of six people were arrested on suspicion of terror offences in connection with the raid – five at the property and one in Kent.

Searches were continuing on Friday morning at three other addresses in London, including a second home in Harlesden Road, as part of the investigation.

Following last month’s attack in Westminster, the Metropolitan Police stepped up the number of officers on patrol at key locations in the capital, with the national terror threat level remaining at “severe”.

Khalid Masood, a 52-year-old Muslim convert from Kent, ploughed his car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, killing four people, before stabbing PC Keith Palmer to death outside the Houses of Parliament.

Isis claimed responsibility for the attack, which Masood had described as “jihad” in a final message sent from behind the wheel, The Independent revealed.

British security services have thwarted at least 13 potential attacks in less than four years.

Additional reporting by PA