Contributed from Queensland

Right now, the story of an attack at Britain’s parliament and the nearby Westminster Bridge is unfolding. Reports say there are two dead. A police officer  was stabbed with a knife and a woman who was hit by a car on the bridge. A number have been injured and some seriously.

It is not clear who is behind the attack, although some media sources are already assuming it must be a “Jihadist” group. No evidence of this has yet emerged. Some eye witnesses have said that the attacker was an Asian male.

If there is more to this, the British authorities need to inform the public. If there is not, it will prove that prime minister Theresa May might be jumping the gun by shifting the country into a full terror alert. The police are conducting a “full terrorism inquiry” and the prime minister has called an emergency meeting of the Cobra committee, which a government committee set up for emergency response to a national or regional crisis.

Unless Theresa May can show the goods, she will open herself up to being accused manufacturing a diversion, to turn attention from her embattled position over the Brexit fiasco, Scottish demands for a new referendum on independence sand several other issues.

London has had its fair share of attacks, which is not surprising, given the history of the United Kingdom as a former colonial power and ongoing penchant for getting involved in overseas conflicts.

Regardless, any politically motivated attacks on the innocent cannot be justified on any grounds and those who commit them do nothing to help their cause. What they do achieve is provide a means for others to carry out racial profiling and attacking a community.

If this does turn out to be a terror attack, its perpetrators need to be dealt with. The United Kingdom also needs to look at itself and deal with the reasons why it invited attacks.

 

Video from The BBC News

Pedestrians caught in the middles flee from danger.