A suspected suicide bomber was shot dead in London today — underscoring the city’s threat, it’s heightened security and raising fears that the bombings that have happened so far may be the new modus operendi.
Sky News:
Police have killed a suspected suicide bomber at a Tube station in south London.
Armed officers opened fire on the suspect after he hurdled a ticket barrier and raced along a platform at Stockwell station.
Police screamed at passengers to evacuate and are thought to have shot the suspect as he stumbled on to a train.
Alarmed onlookers said they saw up to 10 plain-clothed officers chasing an Asian-looking man before opening fire.
Witness Mark Whitby was on the train as he saw a big man wearing a large coat and “looking absolutely petrified” lurch through the doors.
Admitting to being “totally distraught”, he went on: “He half-tripped, was half-pushed to the floor.
“The policeman nearest to me had the black automatic pistol in his left hand, he held it down to the guy and unloaded five shots into him.”
Unconfirmed reports suggest the man was involved in Thursday’s assault on the capital; it is not known if he had a bomb when shot.
The Guardian has a similar report of what most certainly didn’t sound like a surprised, innocent bystander responding to police curiosity:
Another witness, Chris Wells, 28, said: “There were at least 20 of them [officers] and they were carrying big black guns … The next thing I saw was this guy jump over the barriers and the police officers were chasing after him and everyone was just shouting ‘get out, get out!”‘
Reuters adds this:
Witnesses spoke of panic as a man of Asian appearance wearing a heavy jacket vaulted over barriers at Stockwell station on Friday as he was chased by eight or nine armed officers and then shot. Some said he was carrying a rucksack.
“I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I saw them kill a man basically. I saw them shoot a man five times,” witness Mark Whitby told BBC television.
“The other passengers were distraught. It was just mayhem, people were just getting off the Tube … People running in all directions, looks of horror on their faces, screaming, a lot of screaming from women, absolute mayhem,” he added.
Media reports said the man shot was a suspected suicide bomber — possibly one of the four being hunted after Thursday’s attacks.
“We can confirm that just after 10 a.m. armed officers entered Stockwell Tube station. A man was challenged by officers and subsequently shot. London Ambulance Service attended the scene. He was pronounced dead at the scene,” police said.
According to the BBC, a Muslim group is now expressing fears about what it worries is a police shoot-to-kill policy.
The Muslim Council of Britain said Muslims were concerned about a possible “shoot to kill” policy.
Spokesman Inayat Bunglawala said: “There may well be reasons why the police felt it necessary to unload five shots into the man and shoot him dead, but they need to make those reasons clear….It’s vital the police give a statement about what occurred and explain why the man was shot dead.”
But is that feasible when dealing with a suspected suicide bomber — particularly because this one was a little…ahem…suspicious?
Another passenger on the train, Anthony Larkin, told BBC News the man had been wearing a “bomb belt with wires coming out”.
“I’ve seen these police officers shouting, ‘Get down, get down!’, and I’ve seen this guy who appears to have a bomb belt and wires coming out.
“People were panicking and I heard shots being fired.”
The blog London Calling:
And here I am worrying that Britain does not have a shoot to kill policy. I thought we were just waiting to be killed.
Anyway, I’m not sure Muslims are concerned about a possible shoot to kill policy. Certainly, Muslims in Iraq seem rather happy when shoot to kill actually foils a suicide bomber…
As my wife texted me today: “One down.”
Indeed, from CNN’s report it intially sounds as if police shot this suspect right in the nick of time (literally):
One commuter Teri Godly described how she had stood next to the man the British media described as a suspected suicide bomber before police charged in and shot him several times.
“A tall Asian guy, shaved head, slight beard, with a rucksack got in front of me,” she told Sky News television.
“Shortly after that, as I was about to get onto the train, eight or nine undercover police with walkie talkies and handguns started screaming at everyone to ‘get out, get out.'”
Several key questions now arise from this series of events:
- Given the string of events in London, does this mean this is the new reality? That suicide bombers are going to assault London on a regular basis? Answer: We don’t know yet.
- If so, are they destined for other places — such as the United States. Answer: the logical answer would be yes — and that, if so, it would again be some kind of coordinated, multi-bomb attack.
- Have things unfolded the way the terrorists hoped they would?
CNN quotes an expert as saying he doubts that everything is going according to plan:
Intelligence expert Crispin Black told CNN: “Whatever happened yesterday, I suspect wasn’t what the terrorists wanted to happen. It would appear that they are under some sort of pressure. It might be to do with their bombs — people are asking ‘where are the bombing masterminds?’
“And there is another plus point to this: We have got four people on the run, and the police appear to have good forensic evidence to build up a picture from.
“My guess is that all four of these people will not be able to get away. They have no escape plan if they were suicide bombers, and so the advantage is now playing to the security and intelligence agencies.”
If you look at the way terrorism has played out, each time a new outrage or terrorist style shocks a given population, the population begins to adjust to the reality of it as officials take steps to combat it.
The underlying question in the events in Great Britain is this: are suicide bombers, who have in the past largely been seen in Iraq and in the Middle East, now about to operate in Europe and elsewhere in the West on an ongoing basis?
UPDATE: Andrew Ian Dodgein Great Britain has co-written some lyrics defiant of sucide bombers, Cry Freedom — poignant to all but those who advocate blowing innocent men, women and children to smithereens.
OTHER WEBLOGS REPORTING AND COMMENTING ON THIS ISSUE:
–Visit Michelle Malkin. She is starting her roundup which (if she does what she usually does) will expand greatly with all kinds of links.
—James Joyner
—Captain Ed
—La Shawn Barber
(NOTE: TMV will be out a bit today but this post WILL BE updated steadily throughout the day.)
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.