LONDON – The UK government has raised the level of terrorism to severe, meaning that the likelihood of an attack is very high. The decision comes after a taxi explosion in Liverpool on Sunday left one person dead.
Interior Minister Priti Patel said the terror threat level had been raised because there had been two attacks within a month.
British police on Monday said an explosion in a taxi outside a hospital that left a man dead is being treated as a terrorist attack, but the motive remains unclear. Russ Jackson, head of Counter-Terrorism Policy in North West England, said Sunday’s explosion at Liverpool Women’s Hospital involved an improvised explosive device. The male passenger in the taxi died in the explosion, the taxi driver was injured. Four men in their 20s were detained under the Terrorism Act.
THIS IS A HOT NEWS UPDATE. The AP’s previous story follows.
A taxi explosion outside a hospital in England that left one man dead was caused by an improvised explosive device and is being treated as a terrorist attack, but the motive is still unclear, police say. on Monday.
Russ Jackson, head of Counter-Terrorism Policy in North West England, said Sunday’s explosion at Liverpool Women’s Hospital was caused by “the ignition of an explosive device” carried into the vehicle by a passenger.
The male passenger died in the explosion and subsequent fire, the taxi driver was injured.
“The requests will now go on to find out how the device was built, the engine that caused the problem, and find out if anyone else was involved in it,” Jackson said.
Three men in their 20s were arrested elsewhere in the city under the Terrorism Act on Sunday, and a fourth was taken into custody on Monday. All are believed to be “associates” of the passenger who died, police said.
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson will chair a meeting of the government’s COBRA crisis committee on Monday in response to the explosion.
Doubts about the motive for the explosion were raised by the timing – just before 11am on Remembrance Sunday, when people across the UK hold a memorial service for those killed in wars. .
Jackson said investigators have found no link to the memorial events, “but it’s a line of investigation that we’re pursuing.”
“Although the motive of this incident is still not well understood, under all circumstances it has been declared a terrorist incident,” he said at a news conference.
He said the passenger was picked up by a taxi 10 minutes’ drive away and asked to be taken to the hospital, where the explosion took place. The driver, known locally as David Perry, managed to get out of the vehicle. He was treated at the hospital and released.
Police said officers searched two addresses in the city linked to passengers and found “important items” in one of them,
Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said the taxi driver had locked his car door so passengers could not leave. Police did not confirm that account.
Anderson told the BBC: “The taxi driver, with his heroic efforts, managed to divert what could have been an absolutely horrible disaster at the hospital.”
The prime minister also said the driver appeared to have behaved “with an astonishing presence of mind and bravery.”
Nick Aldworth, a former senior terrorism investigator in the UK, said the cab appeared to have suffered “a lot of fire damage with very little damage from the explosion.”
He said that “anything in that car is either low productivity or not working properly, or maybe a fire. So I think there’s a lot to debate at the moment about those things. what happened.”
The UK’s official threat level from terrorism stands at “substantial”, a medium on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is likely. The Joint Center for Terrorism Analysis provides intelligence-based threat levels on international terrorism at home and abroad.
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