Police say incident outside UK parliament being treated as terrorism

LONDON: A man has been detained on suspicion of terrorist offences, British police said on Tuesday, after a car hit pedestrians and crashed into barrier outside the UK parliament.

Police said they were treating the incident as a terrorism-related and the driver, aged in his late 20s, was in custody at a south London police station.

“He was arrested on suspicion of terrorist offences,” the Metropolitan Police said in a statement. “There was nobody else in the vehicle, which remains at the scene and is being searched. No weapons have been recovered at this stage.”

In March 2017, Khalid Masood, 52, killed four people on nearby Westminster Bridge before he stabbed to death an unarmed police officer in the grounds of parliament. He was shot dead at the scene. It was the first of five attacks on Britain last year which police blamed on terrorism.

Britain is on its second highest threat level of “severe”, meaning an attack by militants is considered highly likely.

Last week, a Muslim convert admitted plotting to kill more than 100 people by driving a truck into pedestrians on London’s Oxford Street, the capital’s major shopping thoroughfare.