BBC News with Sue Montgomery
The British government is treating as a suspected terrorist attack the brutal killing of a man on the streets of London. Eyewitnesses say the victim thought to be a serving soldier was hacked to death by two men with weapons including a machete and a meat cleaver. Reports said the two men then waited for the police who arrived after about 20 minutes and opened fire. David Dixon is the head teacher at the local primary school.
"I could see a body lying in the road and the traffic was backed up along quite a busy road and adjoined this the road of the school. So I went back and immediately got school to lock down to make sure the children were safe, to get them all inside if they were doing outside activities. And I * to the police, went to, just went to ascertain how we could proceed from there.”
More now from our correspondent Rob Watson.
The attack happened in the middle of the afternoon on a busy London street. Eyewitnesses described a savage and fatal assault on the victim reported to be a soldier by two men armed with knives and a gun. The attackers were later shot and wounded by the police. In a video recording, one of the alleged attackers says “we swear by Almighty Allah, we will never stop fighting you”. An emergency meeting of senior government ministers and security officials has taken place, and the Prime Minister David Cameron is returning early from a visit to France.
After hearing of the events in London, Mr Cameron spoke to reporters:
"I've been briefed about this absolutely sickening attack in London. It is the most appalling crime. We obviously are urgently seeking and the police are urgently seeking the full facts about this case. But there're strong indications that it is a terrorist incident. People across Britain, people in every community, I believe, will utterly condemn this attack. We have had this sort of attacks before in our country, and we never buckle in the face of them.”
In other news, the FBI says one of its agents has shot dead a man who was being questioned in connection with the Boston bombings in the United States last month. The FBI said the shooting took place earlier this morning in Florida. It's said that the man who’s been identified as Ibragim Todashev was being questioned by agents but then became violent and was shot. Media reports say Todashev was an acquaintance of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the bombing suspect killed in a shoot-out with police.
The United Nations nuclear watchdog says that Iran is increasing its ability to produce enriched uranium, but says there’s been little growth in its most sensitive stock of nuclear material. In its latest confidential report obtained by the BBC, the IAEA says Iran has installed hundreds more of the machines used to enrich uranium, which Israel and the US fear could be used to develop atomic bombs.
World News from the BBC
The president of the European Council says Europe now has a real political will to fight tax evasion. Herman Van Rompuy told reporters after summit talks in Brussels that the EU will draft tougher rules on banking transparency this year.
"We've seen headline-after-headline highlight loopholes in the tax system, fuelling public indignation, and rightly so. The amounts are staggering: hundreds of millions of euro go missing each year. At a time of fiscal pressure and social tensions, fighting this is a matter of fairness and a matter of credibility.”
A key goal is to prevent multi-national firms exploiting legal loopholes to minimize their tax payments.
The Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has said everybody must take responsibility for restoring calm in Stockholm after the capital experienced a third consecutive night of riots. Eddie Bontsal reports.
Police say the trouble started in low-income suburbs where mainly immigrants live and spread to other areas with small-scale copy-cat violence. Fifteen people have been arrested so far, and one officer has been injured. The prospect of further trouble is heightened by a football match this evening between rivals AIK and Djurgarden. But officers say they are ready and the Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt has said Sweden will not be swayed by violence.
The Colombian government has said nine soldiers were killed in an ambush by the country's second largest rebel group, the ELN. President Juan Manuel Santos twittered about the incident, calling the soldiers heroes and commiserating with their families. The army troops were on an operation in the northern Santander state when they reportedly came under heavy artillery attack from alleged ELN members. They’re not part of the ongoing peace talks between the government and Colombia's largest rebel group, the Farc.