London Soldier Hacked To Death By Machete-Wielding Terrorists
A horrifying daytime attack by local terrorists armed with meat cleavers took the life of U.K. soldier Lee Rigby, who was butchered and left dead in the street in southeast London. The crazed killers shouted "Allahu Akbar" after completing their grisly crime and then demanded stunned passers-by take video.
A chilling video shows one of the killers speaking as blood drips from his hands and the weapon immediately after beheading a local soldier.
[There was a video here]
"We swear by Almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you. The only reasons we have done this is because Muslims are dying every day. This British soldier is an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth," the blood-stained man in a hoodie says to the camera. "We apologise that women had to see this today but in our lands our women have to see the same. You people will never be safe. Remove your government. They don't care about you"
The murderers wandered around lecturing horrified onlookers and demanded photographs and video be taken of the grisly scene. The Sun says the solider was decapitated.
A witness told The Guardian that one of the killers was waving a gun, and both appeared to be on drugs.
"I walked back up there and the tall black bloke had changed the gun to the other guy and he had two meat cleavers in his hand," Julia Wilders, 51, told the paper. "And the response police turned up and he's ran towards them with meat cleavers before I could even get out of the car ... they shot him. And then the other one lifts the gun up and they shot him as well."
Another witness told LBC radio: "These two guys were crazed. They were just animals. They dragged him from the pavement and dumped his body in the middle of the road and left his body there."
An anti-racism Muslim group in England just put out a statement condemning the murder and asking people to be calm.
The Guardian reports the attackers survived being shot by police but are now in custody.
The victim was wearing a "Help for Heroes" military charity T-shirt. After being brutally murdered, his body was reportedly "dumped in the street."
According to a local politician, the victim was a military man stationed at Woolwich barracks.
One local resident and eyewitness, 20-year-old Toe Tallant, said a neighborhood woman comforted the soldier as he was dying; suggesting the reports of a "beheading" may have been exaggerated. But later reports on Wednesday night described the murder as a "beheading." The Independent added the additional gruesome detail that the victim was also "disemboweled."
U.K. Home Secretary Theresa May said it was a "sickening and barbaric" murder.
London Mayor Boris Johnson called the murder an "unforgivable act of violence."
This afternoon's attack in Woolwich is a sickening deluded and unforgivable act of violence. My thoughts are with the victim and his family
— Boris Johnson (@MayorofLondon) May 22, 2013
The emergency COBRA team is now meeting in its secret government headquarters, the BBC reports. Prime Minister David Cameron is in Paris meeting with French president Francois Hollande but is reportedly returning home tonight.
[Bottom photos via Getty Images.]