- Two people, a man and a woman died in hospital after being stabbed on London Bridge. Two women and one man sustained injuries and now remain in hospital.
- The Metropolitan Police have identified the London Bridge attacker, who was shot dead by police officers, as Usman Khan, a 28-year-old former prisoner released on parole in December 2018 after spending eight years in jail on terrorism-related charges. Before the attacker was eliminated, passers-by got involved, with a man wrenching the knife out of his hands.
- Khan’s earlier conviction involved a plot to bomb the London Stock Exchange in 2010, as well as Big Ben and Westminster Abbey. Khan had joined forces with a gang of nine other “fundamentalist Islamists” from Stoke-on-Trent, Cardiff and London, planning to set up a “terrorist military training facility” on land owned by his family in Kashmir, according to his sentencing comments.
Despite Khan, aged 19 at the time, being the youngest in the gang, the judge noted he and two others were “more serious jihadis” than the others.
- One of the potential targets of the attacks inspired by al-Qaeda* was Boris Johnson, the then mayor of London, according to Khan’s handwritten list.
- Electronic tag-wearing Khan is said to have been invited to attend a justice conference on former offenders’ rehabilitation at Fishmongers’ Hall, on the northern side of London Bridge, on Friday. This is where the attack began.
Internet users have rushed to social networks to express their condolences and concerns over the recent attack, while the respective hashtag #LondonBridge continues to trend hitting top spots on Twitter worldwide.
* Al-Qaeda is a terrorist organisation, banned in Russia and a host of other countries.