Britain has endured a tumultuous period in recent months including four terror attacks, a catastrophic fire and a dramatic election that left Prime Minister Theresa May's Conservative government badly weakened. Here are some of the key dates so far:

Car as a weapon, the Westminster Bridge Attack 

March 22: Khalid Masood drives a rented car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London and stabs to death an unarmed police officer guarding the British parliament. Five people are killed before Masood is shot dead by a ministerial bodyguard.

Police say the 52-year-old attacker, a Muslim convert with a history of violence, was "Islamist-inspired" and acted alone. The attack is the first in London since soldier Lee Rigby was run over and hacked to death by two Islamist extremists in 2013.

Terrorism targeting children

May 22: Suicide bomber Salman Abedi, a 22-year-old British man of Libyan origin, blows himself up outside a pop concert in Manchester.
The attack kills 22 people - a third of them children - and injures scores more in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group.

London Bridge carnage

June 3: Three assailants wearing fake suicide vests plough through pedestrians in a van before going on a stabbing rampage in bars near London Bridge.

The attack by Khuram Shazad Butt, Rachid Redouane and Youssef Zaghba is also claimed by IS jihadists.

The three are shot dead by police after killing eight people - three French citizens, two Australians, a Canadian, a Spaniard and a Briton.
The next day, May promises a crackdown on extremism in Britain and warns that assailants could be "copying one another" based on similarities with the March 22 attack at Westminster.

...[ Continue to next page ]

Share This Post