worried about that, and i am assuming that this was not some kind of an attack that was targeting the actual acting commissioner of scotland yard. seems more than likely a coincidence that officer was there but that is a dramatic piece of news, if that is the case. and with that acting commissioner have been in westminster possibly to testify or brief or under what circumstances would someone of that rank be in westminster on a day like today? i was just trying to hear what duncan guardham was saying which has deep sources within the british security services and police, and he was talking about an operation that was under way, a rehearsal. i couldn t make out whether he was saying that was happening today, but it may be, there are all kinds of reasons why the acting commissioner of the metropolitan police could be in that area, not least the fact that scotland yard itself is just a few streets away.
a few minutes ago, we saw troops rather oddly doing a ceremony just a few hundred yards from where this happened, so as i said, behind me is britain s ministry of defense. so heavily secured area, and yet obviously in a low level attack, this man with a knife was able to threaten police officers and someone else in a car clearly has injured a lot of people on westminster bridge. you know, these are the threats of modern day policing and of modern day terror. isis has obviously called for low level attacks for people to use vehicles, to use anything that is at hand, to injure and to kill, and these are the challenges that today s security forces face, but at the minute here, the streets around westminster are closed off as we wait for scotland yard to give us more details. as we ve been reporting on
right beside britain s ministry of defense building, and this happened obviously all around parliament. we ve got unconfirmed reports so far that one woman is dead. that s from the reuters news agency, quoting doctors, but no official confirmation of that, and up to a dozen people injured, and as we ve been saying for the last while, this does appear to be some kind of double incident, one involving a car, the second involving a man with a knife. but you know it s a very long time since there has been an incident around the palace of westminster itself. there was a famous bomb attack here in the 1980s, when a conservative lawmaker was blown up by irish republican terrorists. of course with the 7/7 bombings which killed more than 50 people, and a few years ago, there was an attack by a man with a machete on a soldier lee
there were more eyewitnesses who we ve interviewed. let s listen to them. i heard the crash first, and then i thought it was a genuine accident having gone right across the cycle lane and shortly thereafter i saw somebody laying down beside which again, i assumed that it was a cyclist they d gone into and i thought oh my goodness. we re fortunate to have nbc s keir simmons, normally in london but on duty here in the states right now in new york. keir, you ve been talking to your sources. what have you been able to glean? reporter: that s right. i ve been speaking to british security officials. they are still trying to figure out the crucial question here, which is whether this was one person or more than one person involved. that is crucial, because it will give them an insight into whether this was a some kind of a coordinated terrist attack or whether it s somebody acting as a lone wolf, if you like, inired from abroad. the kind of thing that we have seen has been encouraged, i
they had calls, talking about a man with a knife, a car hitting pedestrians, and a person in the river. they will be trying to figure out whether those calls were valid, and then whether any of those people, particularly the man in the vehicle, and the person with a knife, were the same people, or if this is if you like a multiple attack. again, that will be crucial and just one other thing that i picked up from that briefing, andrea, it may be coincidental but is still quite striking, they say the acting commissioner was on the scene of the incident when it happened, when it started. right. and was a witness, and that s why that person who is the acting leader of the metropolitan police, the most important police officer in the uk aside from the commissioner herself, that person, that commissioner acting commissioner was there. that will have caused deep alarm in the metropolitan police. they will have been extremely