A soldier was beheaded today in what police are calling a 'frenzied machete attack' in Woolwich, south-east London, and the two suspects are in hospital recovering from gunshot wounds after a police attack, ITV notes.
In a shocking televised interview by ITV (scroll down to video), one of the suspects makes a series of political statements while holding a machete with blood on his hands. "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we killed this man this is because Muslims are dying daily. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth," he added.
"We apologize that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don't care about you."
Those statements spurred the Muslim Council of Britain to issue a strong statement to condemn the attack as "a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam," as well as to urge Muslim and non-Muslims alike "to come together in solidarity to ensure the forces of hatred do not prevail."
Meanwhile, Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the "appalling" incident and declared that the British people will "never buckle" in the face of terror, according to the Telegraph.
"There are strong indications that it is a terrorist incident," he said. "The police and the security services in the UK will get all of the support they need to deal with this, or indeed with any other incidents."
"We have suffered these attacks before. We have always beaten them back," he said.
Witnesses were shocked and appalled by the brutal Woolwich attack. "We thought the two guys were helping him. We then saw two kitchen knives like you would find in a butchers shop, they were hacking at this poor guy literally. We thought they were trying to remove organs or something. One of the black guys then shouted to me and my partner to get in the car. I then moved the car down the road and dialed 999," a witness told LBC Radio.
"There was no way a human could take what they did him, they dragged him from the pavement and dragged his body in the middle of the road. They then stood on the path waving the gun about. I think they were proud of what they did."
"Some women were trying to shield the dead man and the attackers could have harmed them as well if they had wanted to. There were people filming it on their phones".
Warning: Some viewers may find the graphic content in this video distressing
