Van drives into crowd of pedestrians on London Bridge; injuries reported

By Kurtis Lee

Los Angeles Times

Chaos erupted in London late Saturday when a vehicle rammed into pedestrians on London Bridge, injuring an undetermined number of people and causing hundreds of others to flee in panic.

As authorities searched for suspects, London’s Metropolitan Police Service announced on Twitter that officers were also responding to reports of stabbings in Borough Market — not far from the bridge. Police reported shots had been fired.

Holly Jones, a BBC reporter who happened to be at the bridge when the incident happened about 10:30 p.m., said a van had swerved off the road into a crowd of pedestrians.

“A white van driver came speeding — probably about 50 mph — veered off the road into the crowds of people who were walking along the pavement,” she told BBC News.

“He swerved right around me and then hit about five or six people. He hit about two people in front of me and then three behind.”

City transportation officials announced traffic on the bridge was shut down in both directions.

Authorities did not immediately say if they believed the incident on the bridge was an act of terrorism. If it was, it would be the third such attack in Britain in the last three months.

Calum Curry told CNN that he and friends were walking near the bridge Saturday night when he heard a loud noise.

“We saw a car and a few bodies,” Curry said. “Police flooded the area really quickly. … We heard a bit of gunshots.”

Last month, 22 people were killed and more than 59 others were injured in an explosion at an Ariana Grande concert in the British city of Manchester that police said was caused by a bomber carrying an improvised explosive device.

The explosion happened near an entrance to the 21,000-seat arena just minutes after Grande’s concert ended.

In March, an assailant drove a car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London, killing two, and then stabbed a police officer to death before being shot to death himself.

This spring the U.S. Transportation Security Administration issued a report titled “Vehicle ramming attacks: Threat landscape, indicators and countermeasures,” which notes that in the last three years, at least 173 people have been killed and more than 700 wounded in 17 ramming attacks around the world.

In December, a Tunisian man with ties to Islamic State deliberately drove a 27-ton truck into a Christmas market in Berlin, killing 12 people and wounding 56 others. And in July, as thousands crammed into the streets of Nice, France, for a Bastille Day celebration, another assailant influenced by Islamic State drove a 19-ton cargo truck into a crowd, leaving 86 dead and 434 injured.