Arab News columnists Chris Doyle and Muddassar Ahmed were among hundreds trapped inside the Parliament building in London during the suspected terror attack.
Doyle, director of the Council for Arab-British Understanding (CAABU), was inside the building’s central lobby Wednesday afternoon when the attack took place. He said the building was on lockdown and there were “several hundred” people inside.
Officials annou-nced that there was a suspect vehicle outside Parliament that was being dealt with by bomb-squad units, Doyle said.
“It’s calm now but there was panic earlier,” he told Arab News at 4 p.m. local time, adding that a mass of people were trapped inside the building. “Armed police are everywhere milling among politicians, the public and schoolchildren.”
He tweeted from his handle @Doylech: “Bottles of water passed around by Parliamentary staff. People seated on the floor. Indescribable feeling of shock. People still scared. But seems police in control.”
In other tweets, he wrote: “Those in the dining room in Commons with us hid under tables. Terrified people as police were shouting to get out and go to Central Lobby. Coincidental or deliberate but the attack took place at around time of Division in Parliament. First vote of the week.”
Ahmed, managing partner at Unitas Communications Ltd., said he too was on lockdown inside the Parliament building on Wednesday afternoon.
He was visiting an MP’s office in the building. After the alert was raised they were asked to evacuate the office, but then told to return. Police were carrying out “a door-to-door search” of the building, Ahmed told Arab News.
He said he was feeling “shaken” after about an hour on lockdown, with armed police still moving through the building. “Missed the Westminster attack by minutes,” he wrote on his Twitter handle @unitascomms.
Two Arab News columnists recall Parliament building lockdown
Two Arab News columnists recall Parliament building lockdown
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Costa Rica says plot to assassinate president uncovered
- Security services unveiled that a hitman had been paid to assassinate president Rodrigo Chaves
SAN JOSE: Costa Rica’s government on Tuesday said it had uncovered a plot to assassinate President Rodrigo Chaves on the eve of national elections, in which his right-wing party is tipped for victory.
Jorge Torres, head of the Central American nation’s Directorate of Intelligence and National Security, cited a “confidential source” as informing the agency that a hitman had been paid to attack Chaves.
The purported plot comes two weeks before the country holds presidential and parliamentary elections.
Chaves, who is barred by the constitution from seeking a second consecutive term, has backed one of his former ministers, Laura Fernandez, to succeed him.
Opposition groups have warned against what they see as possible interference in the election from the iron-fisted president of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.
Chaves has invited Bukele to Costa Rica on Wednesday to lay the founding stone of a new mega-prison modelled on El Salvador’s brutal Terrorism Confinement Center (CECOT).
Thousands of young men are being held without charge in CECOT, as part of Bukele’s war on gang violence.
