U.K. Police Kill Man in a ‘Terrorist-Related’ Incident - The New York Times

LONDON — The police shot and killed a man in South London after two people were stabbed on Sunday, in what the authorities described as a “terrorist-related” incident.

The Metropolitan Police said the man had been killed by armed officers in Streatham, about five miles south of Westminster, around 2 p.m. local time.

The condition of the injured and the motive behind the stabbings were not immediately clear.

Images on social media showed the body of a man lying on the pavement outside a pharmacy on Streatham High Road, while at least two officers pointed guns at him.

A reporter or the British broadcaster Sky News said he appeared to be wearing some kind of device around his torso.

A video circulating on Twitter showed what appeared to be at least two plainclothes officers drawing their weapons as they took cover behind a police car. A flurry of yellow ambulances and police cars with blinking red and blue lights flooded the busy street.

The speed with which the police declared a terrorism-related incident on Sunday stood in stark contrast to previous attacks, when the authorities took from hours to days to say that a terrorist assault had taken place.

London was the target of a terrorist attack in November, when Usman Khan, a 28-year-old radicalized man who had served eight years in prison for his involvement in a bomb plot, was shot dead by the police after he killed two people near London Bridge.

After the London Bridge attack, Prime Minister Boris Johnson declared “this country will never be cowed or divided or intimidated by this sort of attack.”

On Sunday evening, Mr. Johnson thanked the emergency services on Twitter and wrote, “My thoughts are with the injured and all those affected.”

Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, condemned the incident in a statement on Sunday.

“Terrorists seek to divide us and to destroy our way of life — here in London we will never let them succeed,” he said.

The United States Embassy in Britain urged people on Twitter to avoid the area.

Streatham, a lively suburb of southern London between the district of Brixton and the borough of Croydon, is a relatively unusual location for a terrorist attack in London; other such assaults in the British capital have taken place in more central boroughs.

The current terrorism-related threat level in Britain stands at “substantial,” meaning that an attack is “likely,” according to the country’s Security Service.

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