Situation Report: Terror attack in Great Britain

On Sunday, at 10:59am local time, a bomb detonated in a taxi just outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital. Liverpool is a city of about 500,000 people in the United Kingdom located 200 miles west of London.

Luckily, thanks to the quick thinking of a Liverpool cabbie, no innocent victims were killed.

The timing of the device detonating was one minute before 11:00am on Remembrance Sunday across the UK, when the entire country holds a two-minute period of silence. Remembrance Sunday is held on the second Sunday of each November and commemorates British and Commonwealth armed services members who served in the two World Wars and other conflicts.

The taxi driver picked up a fare some 10 minutes away and then, when the cab pulled up in front of the hospital, the driver fled from his taxi and an explosion occurred.

Very soon after the incident, counterterrorism police were leading the investigation.

The passenger evidently brought a homemade bomb in the taxicab and detonated it at the scene, killing himself. The taxicab driver was wounded but it expected to recover. There were unconfirmed reports on social media that the taxi driver locked the bomber inside the cab as he fled.

Counterterrorism police were quick to act from that point and just two hours later conducted raids in the area where the taxicab had picked up the fare, on Rutland Avenue. Another raid took place an hour later at a nearby location.

Three men aged 29, 26 and 21 were arrested under the UK’s Terrorism Act at the first raid. A 20-year-old male was also arrested under the Terrorism Act at the second location. All four detainees are associates of the deceased bomber.

Less than 24 hours after the detonation, Britain’s Home Secretary, Priti Patel, announced that the national terror threat level had been set at “severe.” This indicates that authorities believe that a terrorist attack is “highly likely.”

This morning, the UK’s Counterterrorism Policing Northwest confirmed that the taxicab bombing was in fact an attempted Jihadist terrorist attack and the dead bomber was identified at a Middle Eastern male named Emad Al Swealmeen.

This is the second attack in the UK in recent months; British member of parliament David Amess was killed by a Somali jihadi in Essex in October. There have also been knife jihad attacks in Norway, Germany, and France in the past few weeks.

The increased pace of attacks could be an indication that an Islamic revolutionary jihadist climate, such as Islamic State ideologues have called for, is building in Europe, setting the stage for frequent violence.