Terror returned to the UK capital as an IED went off in a subway train in London.
The device injured several people and made the British police go in high gear with armed response teams swarming the Parsons Green station in Southwest London.
At first it was unclear whether the incident was terror related but after a couple of hours the Deputy Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu declared that indeed the police were dealing with a terrorist attack and would be investigating further.
Witnesses at the scene reported people badly burned and a stampede caused by panic after the explosion. Thankfully, despite the injuries, no deaths have been reported yet.
This attack revitalized fears that terrorists could be targeting the subway, or the tube as it is known in the UK, once again.
British Foreign Secretary and former London mayor Boris Johnson made an appeal for calm.
“I’m afraid my information is limited and it really is important not to speculate at the moment,” he said on Sky News. “Obviously, everybody should keep calm and go about their lives in a normal way, as normal as they possibly can.”
Theresa May has called a meeting of the Government’s emergency Cobra committee over the terrorist attack on Parsons Green station.
Cobra, despite the ominous name is simply an acronym for where the meetings take place: the Cabinet Office Briefing Room A. It is one of several secure meeting rooms in the Whitehall area. Who participates in the meetings depends on the crisis at hand. Usually the chairman is the PM, accompanied by senior ministers, the head of MI5, the police, Members of Civil Contingencies Secretariat (something like FEMA) and other relevant agencies’.
The Prime Minister tweeted : “My thoughts are with those injured at Parsons Green and emergency services who are responding bravely to this terrorist incident.”
This year Britain has been hit several times: a car and knife attack near Parliament in March; a suicide bombing in an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester in May; and a van and knife attack around London Bridge and a van attack outside a London mosque, both in June.
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Combined, these attacks have been the deadliest since the 7/7 bombings in 2005 which killed 52 people.
Featured image courtesy of AP
