5:15 p.m. ET June 4, 2017 LONDON — A shell-shocked London pressed on Sunday, trying to recover from the third brutal terror attack in Britain in less than three months and just days before Thursday's general election.
A picture went viral of a man holding a pint of beer as he was fleeing Saturday night's attack that left seven people dead on or near London Bridge, as if embodying the famous British mantra to "keep calm and carry on."
“Yesterday it was very joyful. Today it’s very somber,” said Sinead Halnon, 34, a credit controller visiting London from Wexford, in southeastern Ireland. She said Sunday that she was “shocked and scared” and did not expect another terrorist attack so soon.
In March, a lone attacker killed five people by mowing down pedestrians and fatally stabbing a police officer in Westminster, near Parliament in central London. On May 22, a suicide bomber killed 22 people outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England.
Campaigning was suspended Sunday by the major political parties because of the attack. But Paul Nuttall, leader of the U.K. Independence Party, said he refused to stop campaigning “because this is precisely what the extremists would want us to do."
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack. British Prime Minister Theresa May on Sunday called for tougher measures to contain Islamic extremism.
"It is not yet clear how this atrocity will impact on the general election, said Matthew Goodwin, a professor in politics at the University of Kent. "It may be that Theresa May's tough statement and call for new counterterrorism measures underlines her already strong leadership ratings and halts her party's dwindling lead in the polls."
London Bridge, a major thoroughfare, was still closed off Sunday, with a half-dozen of the famed red double-decker buses still lined up on the roadway as if frozen in time.
"It was horrific," recalled Daniel Ansah, 50, a security guard at Tito's restaurant near London Bridge who witnessed the attack. He and others at the restaurant helped some of the wounded.
"I saw about three people running to the market and there were about five people on the floor,” Ansah said.
"I'm sure there were more than five (attackers), they were fighting two police," he said. "Somebody was on the floor, and they were stabbing and about three or four were rushing to the two police. Two men said, 'Help me.' They had gunshot or stab wounds on their backs, and the blood was flowing."
Vainrus Zukuskas of London was at a restaurant with friends when he fled to the basement when an attacker started stabbing people.
“A car hit the bridge and they (the attackers) started running to us,” he said. "They stabbed the bar manager. He died straight away."
“I don’t remember his face properly,” Zukuskas said of the attacker. He said he stayed in the basement for about an hour before police arrived and he was able to leave.
Terrorism "is a problem everywhere in Europe,” said Albert Portero, 53, a lawyer from Santander, Spain, who was visiting London for a soccer match. “In my country, in Sweden, France … it’s a general problem.” He said the attack would not stop him from visiting London.
Members of the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, an international Islamic organization with members in more than 200 countries, gathered Sunday near the attack site to display solidarity with the victims.
“We wanted to ensure that the true message of Islam is given to people and not the distorted version that extremists would like to get spread,” said Usman Khan, a spokesman for the group headquartered in London.
Khan said more than 8,000 members of the group's youth association were mobilizing to donate an hour of their wages to organizations that support the victims.
Rehana Begum, 64, a housewife who lives close to the attack scene, said she was in a mosque in another part of town when the events unfolded. She had to spend the night at a friend’s because she could not get back home since the area was blocked off. She said her daughter fled the scene of the attack and was traumatized.
“Killing innocent people for what? They killed so many people. You don’t know who’s good and who’s bad,” Begum said.
