from the reporting, there is a narrative this was a targeted attack, muslims leaving the mosque on ramadan. proving that right now will take a little bit longer. so, what happens in a situation, having been in the room in government when there is all this information coming out and you just don t know what s true or not, is basically the mayor of the metropolitan police has put down a marker to say they are aware of what has happened. they are saving lives. that is the most important thing right now. and then a motive will come later. presumably they are doing interviews right now of the man who would tell what his motivation was, and what he intended to do, and why he was there at that time, and whether he was known to police or to the mosque itself, to members of the mosque itself. that may take a few hours. so, i m not at all i m not at
just a little while ago, we had people over here, muslims from the community who performed a prayer. this is a community who does want answers tonight, a lot o people gathered here trying to find out from the police. so far not a lot of information is coming out. what we are hearing is coming from these eyewitnesses. and one man i spoke with was just, as he described, inches away from this van when it hit a group of people. this is a group of people that was just finishing up prayers which they perform at night during ramadan, late night prayer. people were leaving the mosque gathering around. that s when he saw in van come careening in and hitting the people. and he said it didn t look like he was trying to stop. it looked like he was trying to accelerate into this crowd. he said a number of people he saw, at least five were hit by this van. one person was immobilized, was not responsive to people trying
narrative. so, yes, if this attack appears to be what it looks like which is a terrorist attack directed at muslims, you know, it certainly suits the militants on both sides of this, that tensions are kind of rising and but, you know, of course that narrative isn t going to produce the results that militants on both sides really want. i mean, there is no cosmic war between islam and the west. the kinds of attacks that we ve seen in london and elsewhere haven t produced some kind of civilization or war between islam and the west, which is what isis wants. and the british have a long history with terrorism and they tend to have a keep calm and carry on kind of philosophy. but i would add a caveat to
but for the most part, everyone remained calm, just trying to figure out, ana, what exactly happened. exactly. and cnn global affairs analyst david rhode is joining us on the telephone. police aren t sure if this is a terror attack, they have one person in custody. presumably they are interviewing this person right now and they believe this is the driver of the vehicle they are talking to. you say this is exactly what isis wants. again, we don t know what happened, but if this was some sort of retaliatory attack on muslims, they do want to sow division. they do want people of different faiths, christians frankly versus muslims carrying out these kind of attacks. it s a step backwards. i mean, whoever carried this out thinks he s going to somehow, you know, slow this down or this is going to cause radical muslims to stop their attacks,
citizens to say we re all in this together. you have the mayor of london who is a muslim. it says so much about the people of london they elected the first major city in the west they have a muslim mayor is in london. so, the people there are good people. too often i think, even myself, are fixated on the extreme voices. that doesn t define the people there and hope the muslim community there e enbracing tolerance and you see on twitter, they will never call a white man a terrorist, that s a theme we hear a lot. let s see what happens. if this man is a terrorist, the mayor of london and they will deem it a terrorist attack. turns out it was an accident or man mentally ill, so be it. let s see how it plays out. given muslims were involved in this incident in that these were people leaving a mosque according to the muslim counsel