‘Oi, terrorists, cowards!’ Fighting back in London’s chaos
LONDON (AP) — For eight agonizing minutes, the orders came from all directions, frantic and contradictory. Crowds scattered, sometimes directly into the path of the men trying to kill them. Police cars screamed past the attackers toward the van they had abandoned. Chairs, bottles and even a basket flew through the air as terrified onlookers tried to hold off the three men and make sense out of the senseless.
Gerard Vowls was across the street from a Barclays bank branch when he heard someone moan, “I’ve been stabbed.” He thought it was a joke. But as the man leaned weakly against a wall, the blood was all too real. Moments later, as one bystander helped the wounded man, Vowls saw the three attackers fall upon a nearby woman with their knives.
“The three guys, yes, they were just stabbing this woman constantly, non-stop the three of them. Just stabbing her from every direction, the three of them around her. Lunging at her,” he said. “I heard them say one thing: ‘This is for Allah.’”
Police cars screeched past the scene, so intent upon the van the attackers had abandoned after plowing it through a crowd at London Bridge that they did not yet know about the mayhem around Borough Market.
Vowls tried to distract the men with knives and warn the unwitting neighborhood filled with crowded restaurants and bars. He shouted as he ran through the streets, according to his account and that of bystanders who believe he saved many lives Saturday night. Doors slammed shut. The attackers retreated from at least one establishment when they were with a barrage of glass bottles.
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Attack brings out the best in London’s Borough neighborhood
LONDON (AP) — When Sue Brinklow dashed into The Lord Clyde pub during Saturday night’s attack on London Bridge, she was among hundreds of people who found safety and a place to sleep in the Borough neighborhood known for its 1,000-year-old food market and its role as the backdrop for major movies.
“It’s a brilliant community,” Brinklow said outside the police lines around London Bridge.
Brinklow, 51, and her husband, Steve, were trying to get back to their hotel when she was hustled away by police responding to the van-and-knife attack that killed seven people and injured scores more. Cordons were thrown up amid the chaos, and hundreds of people were left stranded.
That’s when the door of The Lord Clyde swung open.
“The landlord said to us, ‘Just come in and have a drink. It’ll be all right,” Brinklow said. “We didn’t have to pay for our drinks. He said, ‘Just make yourselves comfortable’ … And when we found out how severe it was, we just stayed there.”
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Bahrain cuts diplomatic ties to Qatar as Gulf rift deepens
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Bahrain says it is cutting diplomatic ties to Qatar amid a deepening rift between Gulf Arab nations.
Bahrain’s Foreign Affairs Ministry issued a statement early Monday saying it would withdraw its diplomatic mission from the Qatari capital of Doha within 48 hours and that all Qatari diplomats should leave Bahrain within the same period.
The ministry’s statement said Qatari citizens needed to leave Bahrain within two weeks and that air and sea traffic between the two countries would be halted. It wasn’t immediately clear how that would affect Qatar Airways, one of the region’s major long-haul carriers.
Bahrain blamed Qatar’s “media incitement, support for armed terrorist activities and funding linked to Iranian groups to carry out sabotage and spreading chaos in Bahrain” for its decision.
Qatar had no immediate comment.
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Trump vows to do whatever is necessary to protect US
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump said Sunday he will do whatever is necessary to protect the United States from a “vile enemy” that he says has waged war on innocents for too long, vowing: “This bloodshed must end, this bloodshed will end.”
Trump commented on the vehicle and knife attack that killed at least seven people in London at the conclusion of a fundraiser for Ford’s Theater, scene of one of the most famous acts of bloodshed in American history: the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.
“America sends our thoughts and prayers and our deepest sympathies to the victims of this evil slaughter and we renew our resolve, stronger than ever before, to protect the United States and its allies from a vile enemy that ha swaged war on innocent life, and it’s gone on too long,” Trump said in his first public comments on the attack late Saturday in a busy section of London. He previously had commented via a series of Twitter posts.
“This bloodshed must end, this bloodshed will end,” said the tuxedo-clad Trump, standing on stage with his wife, first lady Melania Trump.
“As president, I will do what is necessary to prevent this threat from spreading to our shores and work every single day to protect the safety and security of our country, our communities and our people,” he said.
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Run, Hide, Tell? London attack response likely saved lives
College student Vashu Tyagi was leaving his dorm and heading to a nearby bar to celebrate the end of classes Saturday night in London when he saw people running frantically down the street. As three men with large knives moved through the area, stabbing anyone in their path, police yelled at Tyagi and others to get back inside — an order he credits with saving his life.
“Obviously they gave us good advice,” he said. “I’m quite lucky to be here.”
As reports of stabbings in a popular London nightspot started flowing in late Saturday, police sent out a tweet warning people in the area to run, hide, then call authorities. Officers on the scene also shouted at bystanders to disperse, a response that experts say likely saved lives.
Yet while the Run, Hide, Tell strategy — known in the U.S. as Run, Hide, Fight — has been credited with saving lives in certain circumstances, some say it’s not perfect, especially when a victim’s first instinct might be to freeze on the spot.
“The best thing you can do is to get as far away from the source of the danger as possible,” said Denis Fischbacher-Smith, a risk analyst and professor at the University of Glasgow. “But it’s never going to be a universal solution. It’s never going to work all the time.”
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Putin dismisses US claims about Trump, Russia and elections
WASHINGTON (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin is dismissing as “a load of nonsense” the idea that Russia has damaging information on President Donald Trump and denies having any relationship with him.
“I never met with him. We have a lot of Americans who visit us,” Putin said in an interview with NBC’s “Sunday Night with Megyn Kelly.” He added: “Do you think we’re gathering compromising information on all of them right now or something? Are you all — have you all lost your senses over there?”
U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia meddled in the presidential election to hurt the bid of Democrat Hillary Clinton. Trump himself has been dogged by questions about any business dealings with Russia — he says he has none — as well as reports of a Russian dossier of damaging personal information.
“Well, this is just another load of nonsense,” Putin said. “Where would we get this information from? Why, did we have some special relationship with him? We didn’t have any relationship at all.”
Putin again denied any Russian involvement in the U.S. presidential election and any knowledge of Russian contacts with the Trump campaign. A special counsel appointed by the Justice Department and congressional committees are investigating.
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Voting ends in state election that tests Mexico ruling party
ECATEPEC, Mexico (AP) — Voters in Mexico’s most populous state cast ballots Sunday that could hand the ruling party a much-needed boost ahead of next year’s presidential elections or a potentially devastating blow by throwing off its uninterrupted 88-year local rule.
Voting centers closed in the evening amid dueling accusations of vote buying, complaints that some voters received intimidating telephone calls warning them not to cast ballots and reports of bloody pig heads being left outside opposition party offices.
Leading candidates Alfredo del Mazo of the governing Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and Delfina Gomez of the leftist Morena party both proclaimed victory in the State of Mexico soon after voting ended and long before the official result was known, as commonly happens in the country.
Exit polls were inconclusive and showed a tight race, and early official counts showed each of the two candidates pulling about a third of the vote with just a small fraction of ballots tabulated.
Polls in the closing days of the campaign had given the PRI a slight edge, though the final result could hinge on which party mobilized its supporters and the possibility of party-switching by voters hoping to preventing a PRI victory.