Advertisement

How terror struck out of nowhere

After a horrific attack on young soldier, killers brazenly awaited police's arrival at the scene

Reading Time:3 minutes
Why you can trust SCMP
0
"We will never stop fighting you," one of the attackers says, as his victim lies on the road

A meat cleaver is clasped in his blood-smeared left hand, the other - stained red with human blood too - waves manically as he shouts at the camera, ranting his justification for the atrocity on the streets of southeast London.

At about the same time in the nearby Musgrave primary school, head teacher David Dixon orders a lockdown after seeing the body of a man, believed to be a young soldier, lying on John Wilson Street.

If there was any doubt why this young man, whom witnesses said was wearing a Help for Heroes military charity t-shirt and aged in his early 20s, had lost his life in such a brutal fashion, that was soon quashed. Shouting the justification of al-Qaeda-inspired jihadists across the world, the tall black man spat his words to an eyewitness filming on his mobile phone.

"We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth.

We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth

"We must fight them. I apologise that women had to witness this today, but in our land our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don't care about you."

Advertisement