LONDON — A sole attacker killed three people, including a police officer, and injured at least 20 others in two apparent terror assaults near Britain’s Parliament on Wednesday. Police said the assailant was fatally shot dead by police.
A car mowed down several people on the Westminster Bridge, killing at least one female pedestrian and leaving some with catastrophic injuries. In a separate incident outside Parliament, the assailant stabbed the police officer before being shot.
Parliament went into lockdown after the attack.
The London Ambulance Service said it treated at least 10 people on the bridge, although other media reports put the figure lower.
In one of the most remarkable moments of the still-unfolding incident, British port officials said they pulled a woman from the Thames River, injured but still alive.
“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,” Colleen Anderson, a doctor at St Thomas’ Hospital, told the Associated Press. Anderson confirmed the death of a female pedestrian on the bridge.
Prime Minister Theresa May, who is safe after earlier being spotted by local media being rushed into a car near Parliament as shots could be heard, will chair a meeting of the government’s emergency committee to discuss its response.
France’s prime minister said that some of those injured in the attack, which began at about 2:40 p.m. local time, were French high school students.
It is the first serious terrorist incident in Britain since 2013, when an off-duty soldier named Lee Rigby was killed by two al-Qaeda-inspired extremists.
Since 2013, British counter-terrorism forces have thwarted 13 potential terrorist attack.
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