London Bridge attacker wanted a bigger van to kill more people

The van used in the June 3 London Bridge attack that left eight dead (Metropolitan Police London via AP)

LONDON // British police have arrested two more suspects over the London Bridge attack, and revealed that the carnage could have been worse had the attackers succeeded in their goal of renting a lorry, rather than a van, to mow down pedestrians.

The bloodthirsty gang was also shot dead before they could make their way back to the van where their petrol bombs were stored.

London’s Metropolitan Police on Saturday said they arrested a 27-year-old man and a 28-year-old man overnight in East London on suspicion of preparing acts of terrorism. Police have seven people in custody over suspected links to the three attackers who killed eight people on and around London Bridge on June 3.

Police released details of their investigation on Saturday as they appealed to the public for information. They said Khuram Butt, believed to be the plot’s ringleader, originally tried to rent a 7.5 ton lorry, but his payment was declined. The intended lorry was smaller but similar to the one used in the Nice attack in July last year that killed 86 people and injured hundreds in the resort town in the south of France.

Butt and his two accomplices rented a smaller van that they used to plough into crowds before they leapt from the vehicle and went on a stabbing rampage. The attack left eight people dead and nearly 50 injured. It was the third deadly attack in Britain in less than three months.

“When I come back to Butt trying to get hold of a 7.5 ton lorry — the effect could have been even worse,” said Mr Haydon.

After leaving the small white van, the men used 12-inch knives with bright pink blades, according to Dean Haydon, head of the Metropolitan Police’s Counter-Terrorism Command.

Police also disclosed that more than a dozen petrol bombs and two blowtorches were discovered in the van, and a copy of the Quran opened at a page “describing martyrdom” was found at one of the attackers’ houses.

Investigators believe three victims were killed on the bridge, including one man who was thrown into the River Thames, before the attackers left the vehicle and stabbed five people to death around London’s busy Borough Market. Police believe Butt was driving the van.

Mr Haydon said the men may have been planning even more bloodshed if they made it back to the van. Police also found a number of office chairs, gravel and a suitcase in the van.

Detectives believe the gravel may have been placed in the vehicle to make it heavier, or as part of a cover to justify hiring it, while the chairs may have been used to convince family and friends they were moving furniture.

Butt, a 27-year-old Pakistan-born British citizen, and his two accomplices, Rachid Redouane, 30, who claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan, and Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national with a Moroccan father, were shot dead by armed police eight minutes after the first emergency call.

The three attackers were wearing fake suicide belts consisting of plastic water bottles wrapped in grey duct tape.

Mr Haydon described the pink knives as “pretty unusual” and appealed for anyone with information about where they came from to contact police.

Police raided Redouane’s residence on Tuesday, which he had been renting since April. This was the safe house where the attack was planned, police said. In the residence, police said they found an English-language copy of the Quran opened at a page describing martyrdom, pieces of cloth which appeared to match material wrapped around the petrol bombs and water bottles similar to those used in the fake suicide vests. Luggage straps, plastic retractable craft knives and rolls of duct tape were also found.

The question remains how the men met and knew one another but police do not suspect a wider plot.

“It looks as if it is pretty much a contained plot involving the three of them, which is supported by the forensic evidence we’ve got back so far,” Mr Haydon said.

Butt had been on bail after being arrested for fraud in October and had received police warnings twice —. once for fraud in 2008 and once in 2010 for assault. He had also been repeatedly reported to police for violent behaviour and trying to recruit young children to ISIL and appeared in a TV documentary titled “The Jihadis Next Door,” where he was seen next to a group of men unfurling a black-and-white flag scrawled with Arabic script and associated with the ISIL. But he had no criminal convictions and Mr Haydon said no evidence was uncovered to indicate he was planning an attack.

Zaghba and Redouane also had no criminal convictions in Britain. No had they ever received police warnings.

* Associated Press