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Theresa May Safe Following UK Parliament Attack

by Lara Rutherford-Morrison
Jack Taylor/Getty Images News/Getty Images

The UK Prime Minister’s office has confirmed that Theresa May is safe following the attack outside Parliament, according to Bloomberg. At around 2:40 PM GMT, Metropolitan Police officers gathered at Westminster Bridge, next to London’s parliament building, in response to reports of an incident involving a firearm. At around the same time, journalist Christopher Hope of The Daily Telegraph reported hearing shots fired outside of Parliament. The Telegraph reports that an attacker ran his car into the fence surrounding the Palace of Westminster, hitting and injuring a number of pedestrians in the process. Witnesses report that an attacker then stabbed a police officer with a knife outside the House of Commons; an attacker was subsequently shot by police. (It's not yet clear if the driver of the car and the man who stabbed the officer are the same person.) In a statement, Scotland Yard announced, “[W]e are treating this as a terrorist incident until we know otherwise.”

The Guardian reports that, following the attack, Prime Minister Theresa May was quickly escorted into a car outside parliament, surrounded by “at least eight armed undercover police, some with their firearms drawn.” A source at the Prime Minister’s office told The Telegraph that May “had not been involved” in the attack, though the source did not specify where she was during the incident.

A spokesman for the prime minister confirmed that May is safe, saying in a statement, “The Prime Minister was brought back to Number 10 from Parliament. She is currently monitoring the situation.”

Officials have not yet announced how many people were injured in the attack, though a doctor at St Thomas' Hospital told the BBC that multiple people are seriously injured and that some of the injuries are "catastrophic." So far, one woman is confirmed to have died in the attack.