Police name 2 terrorists in London attack

Police have identified two out of three assailants in Saturday’s deadly London terror attack, which is likely to impact on this week’s national election.

British police named two of the three terrorists responsible for the deadly terror attack in London on Saturday that left seven people dead and roughly 50 wounded, 18 critically.

The named assailants are Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, and Rachid Redouane, estimated to be in his late 20s. Butt, a Pakistani-born British citizen, was known to authorities. Redouane had claimed to be Moroccan and Libyan and occasionally went by the surname Elkhdar.

A third attacker has not yet been identified. Police are appealing to the public for any information.

All three terrorists were shot dead during the rampage on London Bridge and the surrounding area.

Ten others, from the east London neighborhood of Barking, where Butt and Redouane had lived, are in custody.

The attack is expected to impact on the election campaign, as Prime Minister Theresa May had reduced police staffing during her tenure as home secretary. Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn said he supported those calling for May to resign because of her role reducing police staffing during her tenure as home secretary, though he said the best remedy was to vote her out.

“There’s an election on Thursday, that’s the chance,” he said, citing an “appalling” cut in police staffing levels.

May, under fire because of three major attacks in Britain in the last three months, said Corbyn wasn’t fit to safeguard Britain’s security at a time of heightened threat.

“We have given increased powers to the police to be able to deal with terrorists — powers which Jeremy Corbyn has boasted he has always opposed,” she stated.

The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the brazen attack that started on London Bridge and continued in the streets surrounding Borough Market.

Several Victims Not Yet Identified

London police say they cannot confirm the names of people caught up in the attack.

The sister of a missing 32-year-old man said Monday her brother is believed to have died in the attack. Melissa McMullan told Sky News that police said her brother James McMullan’s bank card had been found on one of the bodies. Authorities were “unable to formally identify him until the coroner’s report begins tomorrow,” she said.

It is not clear how having more police on the beat would have prevented the attack, since the men were shot dead within eight minutes, but the issue of police cuts has come back to haunt May, who served for six years at home secretary under her predecessor David Cameron before she became prime minister last year.

During that time, police numbers have dropped by roughly 20,000 officers, and the number of armed officers has fallen as well.

May said Monday that Britain’s counterterrorism operations are fully funded, but London Mayor Sadiq Khan — a Labour figure — said cuts to police have been draconian.

“Over the last seven years, we as a city have lost 600 million pounds ($775 million) from our budget,” he said. “We have had to close police stations, sell police buildings and we’ve lost thousands of police staff.”

The country’s official terror threat level had been set at “critical” in the parlous days after the Manchester concert bombing on May 22 that killed 22 people — reflecting a judgment that an attack might be imminent because accomplices with similar bombs might be on the loose.

It was lowered once intelligence agencies were comfortable that this wasn’t the case. The London attack, carried out by three knife-wielding men in a rented van, is apparently unconnected to the Manchester bombing.

May has said the three attacks — including one on Parliament in March — weren’t connected in any operational sense but were linked by what she called the “perverted ideology” of radical Islam.

By: World Israel News Staff and AP

British electionsCorbynISISLondon terrorRadical IslamTheresa May