RED DEVIL: One of the bloody terrorists who decapitated a British soldier yesterday launches into a rant while holding a cleaver and knife as his victim lies in the street. (
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Two home-grown terrorists shouting “God is Great” in Arabic savagely hacked and decapitated a British soldier in broad daylight on a London street yesterday — then tried to justify the barbaric attack in a rant caught on videotape.
“We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you,” one of the men calmly declared in a clipped British accent, his blood-red hands clutching a meat cleaver and knife.
“You people will never be safe. We must fight them as they fight us. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.”
The brazen assault — a few blocks from the Royal Artillery Barracks at 2:20 p.m. on a quiet afternoon — stunned Britons, who hadn’t suffered a high-profile terror attack since the 2005 London subway bombings.
Prime Minister David Cameron cut short a trip to Paris while British officials ordered heightened security at military barracks.
“We have suffered these attacks before. We have always beaten them back,” Cameron said. “We will never buckle in the face of them.”
Witnesses said the grotesque incident began when the attackers drove their car into the victim, who was walking in the Woolwich section of southeastern London.
They may have chosen him because he was wearing a “Help for Heroes” T-shirt, a charity promoted by the London Sun and Sunday Times newspapers to aid British servicemen and women who have been wounded since the 9/11 attacks.
According to stunned witnesses, the attackers’ car then slammed into a lamppost. They jumped out and attacked the approximately 20-year-old man with knives, a machete and a meat cleaver as they shouted “Allahu Akbar,” Arabic for “God is Great.”
“They were hacking at this poor guy, literally,” a driver who witnessed the scene told LBC Radio. “They were trying to remove his organs or something.”
“These two guys were crazed. They were not there. They were just animals,” he said. He added that the attacker implored passers-by to capture the scene on their cellphone cameras. “They were oblivious to anything, they were more worried about having their photo taken, running up and down the road.”
A British rapper, Boya Dee, gave a running account of the mayhem on Twitter.
“These two black breda run this white guy over then hop out the car and start chopping mans head off with machete!!” he tweeted.
“Ohhhh myyyyy God!!! I just see a man with his head chopped off right in front of my eyes!” he added. “whyyyyyyy!!! F . . .k!!! Right next to a primary school!”
One of the attackers pulled a gun from the car and threatened passers-by when they came upon the shocking scene. The men also pulled the soldier’s lifeless body onto the road and waited about 20 minutes for police to arrive.
During the wait, one of attackers went into a rant, which was filmed on a cellphone by a man on his way to a job interview.
“I apologize that women had to witness this today,” the attacker said. “But in our lands our women have to see the same.”
“You people will never be safe,” he went on, looking directly into a video camera, his victim lying in the road behind him.
“We must fight them as they fight us. This British soldier is an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. Because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day.”
“Remove your government. They don’t care about you. You think David Cameron is going to get caught in the street when we start busting our guns?” he said. “Get rid of them. Tell them to bring our troops back so we can all live in peace.”
“The only reasons we killed this man is because Muslims are dying daily,” he added, waving his knife in the air.
The video went viral after it was aired on ITV News — which said that it had broadcast only a short clip because much of it had content “too distressing” to show.
After the ranter announced, “We want to start a war in London today,” he was confronted by a brave woman passer-by, Ingrid Loyau-Kennett.
“Right now it is only you versus many people. You are going to lose, what would you like to do?” the mother of two told him, according to Britain’s Telegraph newspaper.
A photograph showed her standing up to the attacker, who was only inches away from her and still held a bloody meat cleaver in his left hand.
One of the men tried to attack a woman officer, but she shot him. The second attacker tried to fire his revolver, but Boya Dee tweeted, “it just backfires and blows mans finger clean off.”
Both of the attackers were rushed to hospitals, one in serious condition.
There was no immediate identification of yesterday’s attackers, who were black men and appeared to be in their 20s.
Last night, a Twitter poster saying he knew the man who spoke on the video described him as a British-born Christian who had converted to Islam.
The victim was a soldier who apparently had been on duty in central London and was returning to his barracks when he was attacked, according to Nick Raynsford, a member of Parliament.
The barracks — which house a number of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and independent companies of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards — was the site of shooting events during the 2012 London Olympics.
In the 2005 terrorist attack, four British Muslims detonated bombs on London Underground trains and a bus, killing themselves and 52 others.
Help for Heroes said it was “appalled” by the attack.
The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the “truly barbaric act.” London Mayor Boris Johnson called the attack “a sickening and unforgivable act of violence.”
With Times of London