Explosion outside Liverpoool hospital was a terrorist incident, UK police say.
LONDON – British police said Monday that an explosion in a taxi outside a hospital that killed a man was caused by an improvised explosive device and is being treated as a terrorist incident, but the motive remains unclear.
Russ Jackson, head of the Antiterrorism Police in North West England, said Sunday’s explosion at Liverpool Women’s Hospital was caused by “the ignition of an explosive device” that was inserted into the vehicle by a passenger.
The male passenger was killed in the explosion and fire that followed, and the taxi driver was injured.
Jackson said that “investigations will now continue to seek to understand how the device was built, the motivation for the incident and to understand if someone else was involved in it.”
Three men in their 20s were arrested in other parts of the city under the Terrorism Act on Sunday, and a fourth was taken into custody on Monday, he said.
Suspicions about the reason for the blast have been raised for the time being: just before 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday, the time when people in Britain hold memorial services for those killed in wars.
Jackson said the researchers had not found a link to the memory events, “but it is a line of research that we are pursuing.”
“Although the motivation for this incident is not yet understood, given all the circumstances, a terrorist incident has been declared,” he told a news conference.
He said the passenger had been picked up by the taxi a 10-minute drive away and asked to be taken to the hospital, where the explosion occurred. The driver, locally named David Perry, managed to escape the car. He was treated at the hospital and released.
Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said the taxi driver locked the doors of his taxi so the passenger could not leave.
“The taxi driver, in his heroic efforts, has managed to deflect what could have been an absolutely terrible disaster at the hospital,” he told the BBC.
Britain’s Home Secretary, Home Secretary Priti Patel, said she was “kept regularly informed about the terrible incident.”
Nick Aldworth, a former senior terrorism investigator in Britain, said the taxi appeared to have suffered “a lot of fire damage with very little blast damage.”
He said that “whatever was in that vehicle was underperforming or malfunctioning, or possibly an arsonist. So I think he’s very open to debate right now about what has happened.”
Britain’s official threat level from terrorism is “substantial”, the middle rung on a five-point scale, meaning that an attack is likely to occur.
The Joint Center for Terrorism Analysis establishes the threat level based on intelligence on international terrorism at home and abroad.