we simply don t know that at the moment. but the police are confirming that they did fire shots and that there is there are a number of people injured. in fact, nbc news has just spoken to one eyewitness who said he heard eight shots at least, eight shots. again, can t confirm that, but that is what one eyewitness has told us. and he then saw people running off a bus in panic. what the police are saying as we ve been reporting, is that at 1:58 in the afternoon we were call they were called to a stabbing at a building near london bridge. one man has been arrested and a number of people have been injured. we ve had various reports of casualties. one report says five people were injured, some seriously. another report is saying that one person has died. nbc news cannot confirm any of those reports.
people on the streets, as well as traffic. it s a very heavy populated area, of course, of london. london bridge is an iconic landmark within the city. it s very unusual to see anything like this take place in broad daylight. i m currently looking at the police cordon. police officers are horseback. i see fire trucks and police vans. what we know in terms of what has unfolded here, we saw video posted to social media. one chilling video shows a scuffle on the ground that happened at the bridge area. a shot was fired, presumably by the police, who had their guns raised. and a man seemingly a passerby, just walking off with what appears to be the suspect s knife. police saying they responded to
i ll start with you, bill neely. when we ve had incidents like this, whether it was a bomb threat or an actual bomb or a shooting, we ve seen different approaches, one of which is get things back to normal as quickly as possible. once they give the all clear, they want to restore business, they want to restore normal see, let people get back in their shops, that kind of thing. if police are confident that they have indeed secured the scene, in your experience there, bill, how quickly would they try to get back to, for lack of a better term, business as usual? well, i think london has a long, long history of terror incidents, if indeed that is what this is. and yes, the instinct is, first of all, secure the crime scene. there will need to be it s a long investigation of this, and as i m speaking there are still police vehicles. you ll hear one of them passing
who is on the south side now of the london bridge and knows this area extraordinarily well. what can you tell us? reporter: we re just being moved along by police who appear anxious. it s difficult to know whether this incident is over. a lot of members of the public have just been sprinting after police cleared this area. obviously there s a lot of nervousness here, because this incident happened very, very close to the market where two years ago there was a horrific stabbing incident with a lot of people killed, and of course these incidents don t just end on the first incident, as it were. as we know in the past from terrorist acts in paris and brussels and elsewhere, sometimes they come in twos and in the case of paris, of course, the attack, there were four separate crime scenes. now, i m not saying this is a terror incident.
what the police are doing, what the security forces know, and based on where we are right now, it may well be that the security who it was that was involved and what else might be coming afterwards. learning from 2017 and making sure the area around [ inaudible ]. very quickly, what we know right now is central london is largely at a standstill. there was a bit of a panic set off. there are multiple witnesses and video from people who were around borough market and london bridge just a couple hours ago. police opening fire on the bridge. they ve been responding to a stabbing right near that very, very busy part of central london. we ll take a quick break and continue to follow this breaking news here on msnbc. stay with us. on msnbc stay with us o tell you that