London attack: Four people dead and 20 injured in Westminster terror incident
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Your support makes all the difference.Four people were killed in the Westminster terror attack, police have confirmed.
The number includes the police officer who was stabbed and his attacker, Scotland Yard's top anti-terror officer Mark Rowley said.
The other two victims are understood to have died on the bridge, he added.
He also said at least 20 people had been injured.
Mr Rowley also said police believed there to have been only one suspect, although he said they were carrying out thorough checks.
The attacker, armed with two large knives, mowed down pedestrians with his car on Westminster Bridge, including schoolchildren, then rushed at the gates in front of the Houses of Parliament, stabbing a policeman before he was shot by armed officers.
Eyewitnesses described scenes of terror when gunfire rang out as the attacker approached a second officer within yards of the Houses of Parliament.
Mr Rowley told reporters outside New Scotland Yard: "This was a day we've planned for but hoped would never happen. Sadly it is now a reality."
Paramedics fought to save the officer's life and that of his attacker on the floor of the cobbled courtyard in front of Parliament, with Foreign Office minister Tobias Ellwood among those who rushed to help.
The police officer was wheeled away on a stretcher with his face covered.
Mr Ellwood, who lost his brother in the Bali bombing, could be seen pumping the officer's chest then standing above him, his hands and face smeared with blood.
Other armed officers, some in plain clothes and wearing balaclavas, swarmed around the yard just feet from where MPs had earlier attended Prime Minister's Questions.
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Very moving that Welsh Assembly & Scottish Parliament are suspending in solidarity with us following the attack. Means a lot x
Counter-terror police are making a full sweep of parliament, reports The Independent's Jon Sharman.
Gibraltar's chief minister Fabian Picardo said: "Shocked at attack on London. Yesterday I spent the day at Westminster. Luckily not today."London's Parliament is the mother of democracy!"
20 minutos después sigo aquí subido en el London Eye, vaya movida macho. http://pbs.twimg.com/media/C7iIXZjW0AEAMCu.jpg
Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said: "Horrible images from London. The very heart of the city has been struck. "Our thoughts are with the British people."
Speaking to reporters outside the central London hospital, junior doctor Colleen Anderson from St Thomas' Hospital said a female pedestrian had died.She also said she treated a police officer in his 30s with a head injury who had been taken to King's College Hospital.She said: "I confirmed one fatality. A woman. She was under the wheel of a bus."She died, confirmed her death at the scene."Ms Anderson said: "There were people across the bridge. There were some with minor injuries, some catastrophic."Some had injuries they could walk away from or who have life-changing injuries."There were maybe a dozen (injured)."
We're live in Westminster after a 'terror incident' in the House of Commons bit.ly/2nJHhNm
Poland's former foreign minister, Radek Sikorski, says he was in a taxi leaving Westminster and was checking his email when he heard something like a car crash, "something like a car hitting metal sheet." "I look up and I see that a person is lying on the pavement. I started my camera and I saw more people lying on the street and on the pavement," Sikorski said on Poland's TVN24. "People started running up to them. I saw one person who gave no sign of life, another man was bleeding from his head. In all, I saw five people who were at least seriously injured," he said. "The taxi driver immediately called the emergency number. I heard ambulances within two or three minutes, so the rescue action was really very quick. There is a hospital near there." "It all happened so fast that there was no time to get scared," said Sikorski who posted his video on Twitter.
The Independent's Jon Stone is live on Facebook from near the scene: www.facebook.com
It's exactly a year since the suicide bomb attacks on the Brussels airport and underground system, which killed 32 people.More than 300 people were wounded in the attacks, which were claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.The suicide bombings were Belgium's worst terror attacks.A year on, Belgium is still on a high state of alert, with soldiers patrolling the streets.
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