As details continue to emerge about the devastating terror attack that rocked London overnight, Labor senator Sam Dastyari, who was present at the scene, has described the “panic and dread” as the events of the night unfolded.
Dastyari told ABC News that he was having a “quiet beer” at a restaurant in Borough Market, near London Bridge, when a van ploughed into pedestrians, and assailants with knives attacked bystanders.
The senator told ABC News:
“We heard screaming – you could obviously tell there was an incident and someone starts running past, obviously covered in blood, kind of down the street. It takes you a moment to register whether or not obviously if it’s a bar fight gone wrong or that kind of thing – you don’t know whether it’s anything more serious than that.”
Dastyari said police entered the restaurant and put it in lockdown, sending diners upstairs. He continued:
“There was a real sense of panic and dread that obviously runs through in these kinds of scenarios … In these scenarios, no-one has any information, right? Everyone’s running off the same tidbits – someone got a text from someone, someone saw something, someone saw something said on Twitter. There’s no point pussyfooting around it in these kind of scenarios – people are afraid. There’s a real lack of information. That’s obviously natural. But the police – the number of armed police that appeared in a very, very short period to lock down the area – obviously demonstrated that they were treating it as a very, very serious incident.”
London Ambulance Service confirm that 20 people have been hospitalised in the wake of the attack.
UPDATE: London Police believe that the death toll from the attack stands at six.
AC Rowley confirmed “At this stage, we believe that six people have died in addition to the three attackers shot dead by police.”
— Metropolitan Police (@metpoliceuk) June 4, 2017
Source: ABC News.
Photo: Andrew Taylor / Getty.
