The Islamic State (IS) claimed the responsibility for deadly terror attack at London Bridge that left two people dead and several injured on Friday.
On Saturday, the extremist group’s Amaq news agency said that the 28-year-old attacker Usman Khan was one of Islamic State’s fighters, metro.co.uk. reported.
According to the statement, “the person who carried out the London attack… was a fighter from the Islamic State, and did so in response to calls to target citizens of coalition countries”.
Two people were stabbed to death and three others injured when Khan, a terror convict who had been out on parole, targeted a gathering of students and other former convicts during a Cambridge University conference on prisoners’ rehabilitation at Fishmongers’ Hall at the north end of London Bridge at 1.58 p.m. on Friday.
Usman Khan was living in Staffordshire, UK, was jailed in 2012 for being involved in a conspiracy to bomb the London Stock Exchange and establish a terror training camp in Pakistan.
In 2008, Khan’s home in Stoke-on-Trent was raided as part of a counter-terrorism investigation.
The incident evoked memories of the 2017 terror attack on the same bridge when a van was deliberately driven ploughing the pedestrians before its three occupants ran to the nearby Borough Market area and began stabbing people in and around restaurants and pubs, leaving eight people dead and 48 injured.
The incident in London came less than two weeks before a general election at which Prime Minister Boris Johnson hopes to win a majority to enable him to take Britain out of the European Union.
(With inputs from agency)