Police on Friday rushed to London’s busy Oxford Street shopping district after reports that shots had been fired, sparking fears of a terror incident and leaving 16 people hurt in the panic.
Armed officers locked down the area for more than an hour before the Metropolitan Police said it had not found “any trace of any suspects, evidence of shots fired or casualties.”
British Transport Police said they believed the security scare started with “an altercation between two men” on the platform of Oxford Circus Underground station.
Photo: EPA-EFE
They released CCTV images of the two men and appealed to the public for any information about the incident or what might have caused people to start fleeing the station.
The area was packed with shoppers seeking Black Friday bargains and several people were injured fleeing the scene, including nine who were taken to hospital, London’s Ambulance Service said.
“We checked over and treated several patients who sustained injuries while leaving the Oxford Circus area,” it said. “We discharged seven patients at the scene and took eight patients to two central London hospital for minor injuries. We also took one patient to a major trauma center for leg injuries.”
Police initially said they were responding to reports of gunfire “as if the incident is terrorist-related” and urged any shoppers to shelter in shops for safety.
Crowds ran from the scene, reflecting the nervousness in a country that has sustained five terror attacks since March.
However, police later said they found no evidence of any incident, and tweeted: “Our response on #OxfordStreet has now been stood down.”
“If you sought shelter in a building please now leave, and follow the direction of police officers on the ground if you need assistance,” it tweeted.
Oxford Circus, the junction of London’s Oxford Street and Regent Street, is one of the busiest areas in London, particularly around the tube station, where the entrance is regularly closed at rush hour in a bid to control the crowds.
Ahlam Ibrahim told reporters she was pushed into a shop when people started shouting.
“We didn’t know what was going on, it was really a nightmare,” she said.
Oxford Circus station was later reopened, as was nearby Bond Street, which had been closed for fear of overcrowding. Trains were stopping at both.
In the first statement, police said they were called at 4:38pm “to a number of reports of shots fired on Oxford Street and underground at Oxford Circus tube station... Police have responded as if the incident is terrorist-related.”
They later said there were “numerous 999 [emergency] calls” reporting shots fired in a number of locations in the area.
British security forces are on high alert after a string of attacks this year which have left scores of people dead.
The most recent involved a bomb on a packed London Underground train in southwest London in September, which injured 30 people. A teenager is facing trial for attempted murder.
The pitch is a classic: A young celebrity with no climbing experience spends a year in hard training and scales Mount Everest, succeeding against some — if not all — odds. French YouTuber Ines Benazzouz, known as Inoxtag, brought the story to life with a two-hour-plus documentary about his year preparing for the ultimate challenge. The film, titled Kaizen, proved a smash hit on its release last weekend. Young fans queued around the block to get into a preview screening in Paris, with Inoxtag’s management on Monday saying the film had smashed the box office record for a special cinema
CRITICISM: ‘One has to choose the lesser of two evils,’ Pope Francis said, as he criticized Trump’s anti-immigrant policies and Harris’ pro-choice position Pope Francis on Friday accused both former US president Donald Trump and US Vice President Kamala Harris of being “against life” as he returned to Rome from a 12-day tour of the Asia-Pacific region. The 87-year-old pontiff’s comments on the US presidential hopefuls came as he defied health concerns to connect with believers from the jungle of Papua New Guinea to the skyscrapers of Singapore. It was Francis’ longest trip in duration and distance since becoming head of the world’s nearly 1.4 billion Roman Catholics more than 11 years ago. Despite the marathon visit, he held a long and spirited
‘DISAPPEARED COMPLETELY’: The melting of thousands of glaciers is a major threat to people in the landlocked region that already suffers from a water shortage Near a wooden hut high up in the Kyrgyz mountains, scientist Gulbara Omorova walked to a pile of gray rocks, reminiscing how the same spot was a glacier just a few years ago. At an altitude of 4,000m, the 35-year-old researcher is surrounded by the giant peaks of the towering Tian Shan range that also stretches into China, Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan. The area is home to thousands of glaciers that are melting at an alarming rate in Central Asia, already hard-hit by climate change. A glaciologist, Omarova is recording that process — worried about the future. She hiked six hours to get to
The number of people in Japan aged 100 or older has hit a record high of more than 95,000, almost 90 percent of whom are women, government data showed yesterday. The figures further highlight the slow-burning demographic crisis gripping the world’s fourth-biggest economy as its population ages and shrinks. As of Sept. 1, Japan had 95,119 centenarians, up 2,980 year-on-year, with 83,958 of them women and 11,161 men, the Japanese Ministry of Health said in a statement. On Sunday, separate government data showed that the number of over-65s has hit a record high of 36.25 million, accounting for 29.3 percent of
RSS