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Survivor of London Bridge Attack shares horrifying experience | 'It was like a horror movie'
7NEWS Spotlight's 14-minute overview: the quickest complete way into the case.
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On the evening of 3 June 2017, a van was deliberately driven into pedestrians on London Bridge before crashing on Borough High Street, just south of the River Thames, in London, England. The van had been hired earlier that evening in Harold Hill, Havering, by Khuram Butt. Its three occupants then ran to the nearby Borough Market area, where they used 12-inch kitchen knives with ceramic blades to stab people in and around restaurants and pubs, while wearing fake explosive vests made from water bottles wrapped in tape. Witnesses reported the attackers shouting "This is for Allah."
The attack occurred amid a heightened threat environment: in March 2017, five people had been killed in a vehicle-and-knife attack at Westminster, and in late May a suicide bomber had killed 22 people at Manchester Arena, prompting a temporary rise in the UK's terror threat level to "critical."
During the assault, members of the public and off-duty and on-duty police officers intervened to confront the attackers or assist victims, several sustaining serious injuries, including stab wounds. The three attackers were shot dead by Metropolitan Police and City of London Police firearms officers roughly eight minutes after the first emergency call, following a 46-round exchange by eight officers. Their fake explosive vests were later destroyed in controlled explosions.
Eight civilians were killed—citizens of Spain, the United Kingdom, Australia (two), Canada, and France (three)—and 48 people were injured, including additional foreign nationals and four police officers. Two of the deaths resulted from the vehicle-ramming; the remaining six were fatal stabbings. One victim's body was recovered from the Thames near Limehouse several days later.
The three attackers were identified as Khuram Shazad Butt, a British citizen known to police and previously linked to the banned extremist group Al-Muhajiroun; Rachid Redouane, a failed asylum seeker not previously known to UK police; and Youssef Zaghba, a dual Moroccan-Italian national who had been flagged by Italian authorities in 2016 for possessing ISIS-related material. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, and then-Home Secretary Amber Rudd described the attackers as "radical Islamic terrorists."
In the aftermath, police made 12 arrests in raids in Barking and Newham; all arrested individuals were later released without charge by 16 June. An inquest opened at the Old Bailey on 7 May 2019, presided over by Chief Coroner Judge Mark Lucraft QC, which concluded that the victims had been unlawfully killed and that the attackers had been lawfully killed by police. Several civilians and police officers were later honoured for their actions, including posthumous and living recipients of the George Medal, British Empire Medal, Queen's Gallantry Medal, and other commendations.
