Daesh claims London terror attack

OLIVIA CUTHBERT & BEN FLANAGAN
A handout picture obtained from the twitter user @sylvainpennec shows a white container burning inside a London Underground tube carriage at Parsons Green underground tube station on September 15, 2017. More than 20 passengers were injured, some suffering severe burns, in an early morning explosion on a London Underground train in what police described as a "terrorist incident," the fifth attack in six months in Britain. (@sylvainpennec via AFP)

LONDON: Daesh claimed responsibility for a bomb attack on a busy London commuter train Friday, which sparked a massive manhunt and prompted the UK to raise its security threat level to “critical.”
At least 29 people were injured but none killed after an improvised explosive device was detonated on a train in Parsons Green, west London.
“The bombing on a metro in London was carried out by a detachment of the Islamic State” group, Daesh said in a statement published by its Amaq propaganda agency, according to AFP.
Prime Minister Theresa May said in a statement that armed police and members of the military would be deployed on the streets, as the terror alert status was raised to “critical,” its highest level.
“For this period, military personnel will replace police officers on guard duties at certain protected sites that are not accessible to the public,” May said.
The detonation of the homemade bomb — which had been hidden in a bucket inside a supermarket bag — sparked a huge manhunt for the perpetrators, in what was the fifth terror attack on UK soil this year.
There was however speculation that the device did not detonate properly.
“I would say this was a failed high-explosive device,” Chris Hunter, a former British army bomb expert, told The Associated Press.
The bomb was detonated remotely on London’s busy District Line as the train pulled into Parsons Green tube station shortly before 8:20 a.m.
Passengers fled onto the platform in panic after the blast sent a “fireball” tearing through the carriage, causing a stampede as commuters rushed to escape.
Emma Stevie, 27 who was on the train when the explosion took place, described scenes of chaos as people climbed over each other to escape.
“There was a human stampede, down the stairs … there were people lying underneath getting crushed, a big human pile-on,” she told the BBC.
“Layers and layers of people screaming. It was really traumatic.”
BBC Security Correspondent Frank Gardner described the device as “relatively small and relatively amateur” and said the attacker probably intended to inflict a lot more casualties.
Abdullah Khaled Al-Saud, a visiting fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence (ICSR) at King’s College London, agreed with that assessment.

Topics: London Underground Daesh Parsons Green Amaq King’s College London