A van struck a crowd of worshippers leaving a mosque early Monday morning, killing one person and injuring 10.
Police in the United Kingdom are investigating possible links to terrorism after a van was driven into a crowd of people outside Finsbury Park Mosque in London in the early hours of Monday morning.
The incident occurred during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, when people attend prayers at night.
Police say the driver of the van is a 48-year-old man who has been arrested and taken to a hospital as a precaution.
Community leaders are praising a local imam for restraining a mob that had surrounded the man accused of driving a van into a crowd of worshipers near Finsbury Park Mosque in London. The elderly man died at the scene, but it wasn't immediately clear whether he received additional injuries from the van or if his medical treatment was cut short by the incident. "When (the driver) was running, he was saying, 'I wanna kill more people, I wanna kill more Muslims, '" he told BBC TV.
Prime Minister Theresa May chaired an emergency meeting later on Monday and said: "It was an attack that targeted the ordinary and the innocent".
Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick added: "We are here as you are well aware because of the awful, bad attack that took place last night".
Amateur video footage seen by AFP showed at least three people laying on the ground, including one who was receiving mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
London attack: Imam protects driver who attacked mosque from angry mob
According to Reuters, British Prime Minister Theresa May said the incident was being treated as a potential terrorist attack . Two of them were in a very serious condition, police said.
Suspect appeared to blow a kiss at onlookers after being put in a police van following the incident.
She said the attack was "every bit as insidious and destructive to our values and our way of life" as the recent incidents in London believed to have been motivated by Islamist extremism.
"It was a van that mounted the pavement as men and women were leaving the mosque to go home to their families and friends and their loved ones", Jackson said.
Police said extra personnel had been deployed to reassure Muslim communities in London and security outside mosques would be reviewed.
"Like the bad attacks in Manchester, Westminster and London Bridge it is also an assault on all our shared values of tolerance, freedom and respect", he said in a statement.
The Muslim Council of Britain called the incident a "terror attack" and the "most violent manifestation" of Islamophobia.
Earlier this week, a London tower fire killed 58 people, while earlier this month, a van veered into pedestrians on London Bridge, setting off vehicle and knife attacks that killed eight people and wounded many others on the bridge and in the nearby Borough Market area.
On May 22, a suicide bomber killed 22 people at a concert by American pop singer Ariana Grande in Manchester in northern England. Five people were killed in that attack.
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