who were shot and killed in borough market. the suspects had been confronted and shot by police within eight minutes of the first call. the suspects were wearing what looked like an explosive vest that were later established to be hoaxes. the ongoing operation is led by the met working closely with british transport police, and the ambulance and fire services full of at this stage we believe that sadly, six people have died in addition to the three attackers shot by police. there are at least 20 casualties taken to six hospitals across london but numbers are still rising. i would like to repeat our request for londoners to avoid the areas of londoners to avoid the areas of london bridge and borough market to enable emergency services to continue this operation. this investigation, as i said, is led by the counter terrorism command and we ask for help from the public. anybody with images film from the incident tonight, they can help us by uploading it to ukpoliceimageappeal.co.uk. you will find that tweeted on various newsfeeds. of course, our thoughts are with those who are involved and those who are concerned about loved ones in the area. they should contact our casualties euro. again, if you are worried about someone in the area, contact our casualties euro. —— casualty bureau. please be vigilant and contact the police if you have any concerns. assistant commissioner, can you tell us is this incident completely over now? our current belief is that there were three attackers, but this is early on, so we've still got some enquiries to work through to be completely confident about that. there were three attackers in the vehicle, so the attackers in the vehicle have all been killed? this is a protracted incident that starts on the bridge and finishes in borough market and we believe three people were involved but we've got more enquiries to do to be 100% confident in that. can you tell us more about the attacks and where people were being killed? you're asking for a lot of detail there, we're still getting to the bottom of what's gone on, the number of casualties and it is still a complex scene, as you've understood from what i've said, we are still dealing with the fact that at one stage there was believed to be exposes but that's now been ruled out. can you tell us a bit more about the people involved in the operation to bring down these terrorists? the public will be aware we have strengthened our armed policing presence across london in recent years, we got more armed was once vehicles to hand and it's those armed response vehicles out driving around london day in day out to protect the public, they responded quickly and bravely confronted these three individuals, shot them and they are dead. that was assistant commissioner from the metropolitan police with the tragic news that six people have lost their lives after this terror attack in central london and the three suspected attackers, as you heard, also shot dead. i would like to tell you that a ariana grande, the american singer giving a concert at the manchester arena a few days ago that left 22 people dead, she has just sent out a tweet because she is back in the united kingdom ahead of that consett, the fundraising concert in manchester, for the victims of that attack. she has put out a tweet saying that she is praying for london. ariana grande praying for london. that consett a little bit later on today with katy perry, miley cyrus, justin bieber take that and many other stars to raise money for the victims of the manchester attack. we have been hearing throughout the night from eyewitnesses who have seen, watched and heard the horror as it unfolded here on london bridge and borough market. this is an eyewitness called gerard spoke to us earlier. so i walk up to london bridge, i go passed the natwest bank, come under the train bridge, the next minute i saw a geezer on the floor going, "i've been stabbed, i've been stabbed." i looked at him, there was blood on him, "someone‘s stabbed my mate, someone‘s stabbed my mate." the next thing i saw three muslim guys run up with knives, they ran up started stabbing this girls, the three of them, i was defenseless, i couldn't do nothing, mate. they attacked her, then they stabbed another guy i think if i remember rightly, i was a bit shocked, they started running up the road, i started going, "everybody run, they're terrorists, run, run, run, they're stabbing everyone." i followed them went to the natwest bank towards borough market, i started running up to the tavern, they stabbed the bouncer, they were stabbing, running in all the pubs, all the bars, i can't remember all of them, they were stabbing everyone. i was going to people, "run, run, run!" i was throwing bottles at them, pint glasses, stools, chairs, i tried to do as many things as i could but that the end of the day i was defenceless, mate. if i had fell over they would have stabbed me. you said they were stabbing everyone, what did you see them do? they were running up saying this is for allah, and they ran up and stabbed this girl i don't know how many times, maybe ten or 15 times. she was going, "help me, help me!" i couldn't do nothing, i tried to help, i threw something, there was a bike on the floor, i tried to pick up a chair but it was locked to it, just to get them away from her but i couldn't do anything. when you look at the cctv, the police will, they will see me on the cctv at borough market chasing them and throwing bottles at them and glasses, that's a silly thing to do but i was just trying to save people's lives. did they actually try and attack you? yeah, they tried to stab me. do you have an injury? no, no, no. i threw something at them, a stool, a chair, and as i threw i hit a couple of them on the head, hit a couple of them like that on the back. then they ran towards me to try to stab me and if i slipped over i would be dead now, i would have been killed there and then. that was an eyewitness earlier about what he saw. let me show you behind me is the shard. just there you can see, as dawn breaks over central london, it isjust see, as dawn breaks over central london, it is just after half past four london time and the police investigation is really only beginning now into this terrorist atrocity, this latest terrorist atrocity, this latest terrorist atrocity to hit the united kingdom after the westminster attacks and then the manchester bomb attack a few days ago that left 22 people killed. and now this attack at london bridge and borough market as police have said have left six people dead, 20 people in hospital and three attackers shot by police within a few minutes of them getting the emergency call that there had been an attack of some kind. the three attackers had what appeared to be suicide vest or explosive vests strapped to their body. the police said they were hoax vest from one picture that we saw they appear to be canisters strapped to one of the bodies. those three suspected attackers all shot dead within just attackers all shot dead within just a few minutes of police initially getting the call at eight minutes past ten london time. i have been getting the thoughts of our home affairs correspondent. it is important to understand the geography here. london bridge runs from the city, cross the river to a very, very busy london area, i come here often to go to the court. london bridge station is one of the busiest in the country and it is somewhere where people would have headed to to head home. the bridge around the corner around the corner from the bridge is borough market. there are cafes and food stalls in the daytime we understand, from eyewitnesses and, clearly, we have to have a little health warning there that witnesses think they see something and describe things in various ways that is not entirely accurate. what they seem to be centring on is a white van crashing into pedestrians at the southern end of the bridge, outside a pub there on the southern end. two, stream, maybe four men getting out of the van armed with knives and attacking people on the pavementjust near where the collision happened and then running into the borough market area. in that area are many pubs and cafes. i spoke to an eyewitness who i’u ns cafes. i spoke to an eyewitness who runs security for a number of establishments and he said he was getting reports by phone of people being stabbed in the cafe. that means that this took a bit of time to develop. people were stabbed and then there were phone calls made. he went out and saw attacks happening in front of his eyes. he was deeply shaken up. he saw a woman in her early 20s stabbed severely and go to the ground badly injured. he described one of the attackers as having what looked like canisters ta ke to having what looked like canisters take to the body. we have seen a photograph that suggest that if the correct description. and then there was police intervention. shots were fired but the police have not said anything about the shooting. i think thatis anything about the shooting. i think that is important. we need to understand why that is. to meet suggest that they are trying to work out exactly what shots were fired before putting out a brief and factual statement about what happened, what the outcome was, how many attackers they were. the other key piece of information we are still waiting for is a rough idea of the number of people killed in the incident and the number of injuries. as you discussed, the major trauma units in this part of london are used to dealing with this sort of thing. they will be under their full procedures for dealing with an emergency like this. an awful lot going on. the police are still monitoring the scene. a police helicopter overhead circling around the same area. that tells us what is going on. it is circling the same area so going on. it is circling the same area so it does not look like this is an incident that is continuing. false alarms around the place, a few incidents that are not linked to this that just incidents that are not linked to this thatjust happened to occur on a busy saturday night in london. and, also, controlled explosions that we think, seem to be some bangs in the direction of the bridge, likely to be the police in dealing with banks that have been dropped during the incident as it develops and to be certain that there is nothing nasty in any of those items on the floor. we hear that the emergency committee will meet later today and, of course, the terror threat level was raised after the manchester attack to critical but then brought back down to severe. cobra meets to assess the security situation. the government has independent advisers that look what police say, look at the security services and what they say and give an independent view as to what the government should do in regards to security. it is the government ‘s decision in the end but they generally accept the advice of their security analyst. after the manchester attack, the analysts said to ta ke manchester attack, the analysts said to take it to critical, the highest level in the five level system. only the third time that level has been reached. the critical level meant that an attack may be imminent. after police got control of their understanding of the manchester bombing they then dropped the level to severe which still means that there is still a severe risk of attack. it is likely we will go back critical as there is evidence of another impending attack. but that is up to cobra and the government. obviously we have the westminster attack, the manchester attack and now this. all different in many ways. the first in the third is similar in one obvious respect. a car attack followed by a knife attack. in this case we have a conspiracy. several men who appear on the eyewitness accounts we have so on the eyewitness accounts we have so far to have planned this and carried it out together. the first man in, at westminster, was a lone wolf. the middle attack, the bombing in manchester was entirely different. there is a lot of evidence that salman abedi went abroad to libya and came back to manchester shortly before the bombing and rented various flats. there is some evidence that he constricted his device in some of those flats. that does look different. the first and the third look quite similar. it's important toi look quite similar. it's important to i remember the bombings in 2005, we had one attack and then two weeks later another attempt to kill and maim on the london underground, likely that did not come off. one attack often leads to another. the security system is heightened and plotters become concerned they may be pulled into a net of investigation so they move forward with their plans. the security forces are with their plans. the security forces a re aware with their plans. the security forces are aware of these cases. talked about all of the plots that they have pulled over a large period of time, including those 77 bombings. people that have to be involved in plotting as we speak, and, you know, there are not unlimited resources to follow these people. it takes one dozen or two dozen or possibly three dozen people to follow one person around the country 2a seven. the resources are not there. they have to make decisions and it is difficult and in a plot like this, the planning may be quite basic, it may be get some weapons and do this and it doesn't ta ke weapons and do this and it doesn't take long for several people who are like—minded to put together as an attack plan and carry it out. if they are not people the police are aware of, their identities in a dance, it becomes difficult. one other incident actually, it almost got missed in the things that have been going on in the last few months, it was a man arrested almost outside downing street with a bagful of knives. the theory is he was under surveillance, the police said they went as far as they could to gather as much evidence as to what he was intending to do and then arrested him, so it goes to show how decisions taken by the security services to be difficult and split—2nd and of course life and death at stake. very difficult stuff. the police will be clear to get the identities of these men involved in this and then find out who they may be connected with to reassure the security system that there isn't something else planned tomorrow or the next day and it is a key thing for the government to understand. armed police appear to have been on the scene so quickly and obviously because of the heightened state of terror alert, it was critical and it was brought down but even so, a lot more armed police on the streets of central london. piece of information missing, we are not clear when the first officers arrived. i think the nearest ones would have been the british transport police over the road at london bridge who have them armed officers. i think there is probably likely to have been armed officers on the station at the time. it's clearly a potential terrorist target. we don't know when they arrived. i spoke to one eyewitness who said he didn't see any police officers, we have not yet managed to work out when shops may have been fired. it is a key question that we wa nted fired. it is a key question that we wanted to hear from the police, what sort of response there was. but they are ready for something like this. i was briefed along with a number of otherjournal of about the preparations of a big uplift in the amount of firearms popped up for offices that police all around the country can call on, the nuclear can still tree also have people can call on, and a higherweapon still tree also have people can call on, and a higher weapon count, capable of holding up in a sustained gunfight with terrorist. it is something they are now trained for. interestingly trade to shoot to stop a vehicle which is a change in the procedures that police have. previously they had a method of working which prevented them shooting of a vehicle because an uncontrolled vehicle can be dangerous but in this case clearly you can see it may be a decision they have to take to shoot somebody with a car. it doesn't seem to have happened in this place but it gives you an example of the level of training that officers have to go through to deal with things like this. of course london now, and other terror attack and we have seen so other terror attack and we have seen so many in europe. people are having to get used this way of life. we saw it in berlin, nice, russells, —— russells. at the little less. when the metropolitan police, when london and parliament was attacked by khalid masood, they said they needed people to remain calm, to remain vigilant, and to remain alert. they have also put out the advice about being aware of what is going on, running from the scene if something is happening, hiding, and telling the police, reporting what is going on. that is very important also. to that with that advice out. it shows they are trying to get the message is out. quite dramatic advice. it is, and it is being thought about, they haven't just very together tonight, the thought about the best way to do this and the advice in the united states is different, it is about fighting back but in the uk, the advice is to get out of the area and tell the police and if you cannot get out, then hide. it shows you they want to get the message across directly to the public because the way that police communications work nowadays is to talk directly via twitter and social media to the public. don't worry about what people like me are going to say. talk directly to the public and hope that people can get on with their lives while those awful stuff happens around them. that is our home affairs correspondent talking to mea home affairs correspondent talking to me a bit earlier. you can see now it is like here in central london as the police investigation continues into this dreadful terrorist atrocity— light. the latest to affect the united kingdom. as police have been telling us, six people have been telling us, six people have been telling us, six people have been killed in the attack at london bridge and borough market. it happened at ten oh eight p.m.. people, londoners and visitors to the capital were out in the london bridge area enjoying themselves. the three suspected attackers, all shot dead by police, by armed police, within a few minutes of them getting the first alarm call, the first emergency call. let's show you some pictures of a bar in the area. you can see is the police go in, just not quite clear what is going on. scenes of chaos really. panic. the police look like they are either looking for the assailants or trying to warn people in the bar. quite a lot of panic there, as you can see, and it was replicated in many of the other bars and restaurants around the area. well, i've been talking to a couple of eyewitnesses who saw some of what happened. i spoke to robbie kittler and joshua land who saw the white van. firstly robbie explained what he saw. we were in the pub. my friend josh ordered a taxi. i left, crossed the road, got into the taxi and looked out of the window, josh has gone in to get our friend. five or ten seconds later, i see 20 or 30 people trying to run inside the pub, which i thought was rather odd, then i saw a white van speeding down the pavement and crashed into either a lamppost or a wall, not sure what. then i saw two or three males jumping out of the van and running down the road and at that point the taxi driver sped off. we didn't know what was going on, we thought a bomb might have gone off or some sort of terrorist attack, at first we thought there might have been a car accident but the restlessness of the people jumping out of the van didn't seem quite right so the taxi driver sped off down the road. from what you could tell, what did these men look like? two to three males jumped out of the van, they looked aggressive, i think they might have been shouting. it was quite hard to make out what was going on. at first it seemed like it could have been a car accident, someone losing control of a van, but the aggressiveness and speed at which the people jumped out... theyjumped out of the van and started running down the road. it was quite a horrible sight actually. did you see any of the casualties that had been caused by the vehicle? i didn't actually see anyone immediately get hit over. the taxi driver went to the other side of the road and we saw someone who looked like he had been badly injured. i didn't actually see the van hit anyone. perhaps i can talk to your friend, joshua land, who you are with that you mentioned, what did you witness? rob has just chatted to you, he was in the taxi crossing the road, he got in, i went back into the pub, called the barrow and banker, barrowboy and banker, i went in for ten to 15 seconds to get my friend, we had just ordered the taxi, i walked outside and i can't remember whether people were running in all what, i rememberthere being a bit of a commotion and to the right of me, and we're talking two metres away from the front of the pub entrance was this white van which had crashed into the railings just to the side. i could see that the wheels were all smashed up. the front — it didn't look too bad. i actually thought when i saw it, ok, this sort of looks like an accident, i didn't think it was a terrorist incident at this point. like i said i came out with my friend, christian. we looked across where the uber had been and that was gone, there was no uber, the van was there, no one in the van, then i heard running up from the steps, right next to the barrowboy, and i heard them shout, he's got a knife, he's stabbing people. that's all we heard and then we've and and my friend said to me, josh, run, call your family. we ran towards london bridge station. i tried to get hold of a couple of people. i'll be honest, i didn't see anyone about. there was a bit of commotion but there wasn't a huge amount of information being disseminated between people. some were walking around as if it was normal, some people were panicking, particularly in the station it was as though half of the people didn't have a clue what was going on. even though i saw part of it, i still didn't know what was going on. but i definitely saw the van crash into the gated fence area. it looked a bit mangled and then i saw the guy running up, the stairs i think lead down to borough market, i heard a guy running up from those stairs and that's when he shouted, he's got a knife, he's stabbing people. what was going through your mind, joshua, when you heard those words, he's got a knife? i'll be honest, it took me a long time to realise what was going on. i didn't fully believe what was happening. i'd been out there ten seconds earlier with my friend with the taxi, literally went into get someone, came out and i thought it didn't look too mangled so i thought it was an innocent swerve off the road at the time and it was only when i heard this guy shout he's got a knife, he's stabbing people, and to be honest i still didn't believe it. my friend shouted at me to run and to call my family. i kind ofjust followed him, i didn't really react too much if i'm honest. but, yes, it was certainly strange when i walked out. there was a strange atmosphere when the van was there, you can see it and i don't think anyone knew what was going on but as soon as this guy shouted that, that's when people started running and i think a fair few people ended up staying in the pub and i think they were there for a bit. i don't know what happened to them, i think they were all fine. a couple of eyewitnesses they're talking to me earlier. we are now here as dawn breaks across london. just one of the many police cordons around the london bridge area, all the roads around here are sealed off this morning as the police forensic investigation continues into the latest terror atrocity. let's bring you up—to—date with exactly what we know now which is company assistant metropolitan police commissioner mark rowley, telling us that six people have been killed in this attack. it was an attack that began attack. it was an attack that began at 10:08pm london time last night and that was when the police got their first calls about the attack so their first calls about the attack so shortly after ten o'clock. a white van drivel high—speed across london bridge, one of the main bridges in london, and hit a number of pedestrians and passers—by. there we re of pedestrians and passers—by. there were multiple casualties. three men inside the van then jumped out, brandishing knives. then they carried out frenzied stabbing attacks on passers—by and pedestrians in the borough market area as well. so six dead, the police quite quickly afterwards, just a few minutes afterwards, shot dead the three suspected assailants who had what looked like explosive vests strapped to their bodies but those were actually hoax explosive vests. those three were shot dead, according to the police. it's other people have been killed as well and more than 20 injured. london ambulance service actually saying 30 people were taken to various hospitals, six different hospitals is where the casualties are now being treated. this is bbc news coverage of the latest terror attack here in the united kingdom at london bridge and borough market. it happened just after ten o'clock london time, around seven hours ago. we now know that six people have been killed and three suspected assailants have been shot dead. this is special coverage on bbc news channel and bbc world as well as bbc one. let's bring you up—to—date with the very latest as we have it. just after ten o'clock local time, a white van swerved off the road and ploughed into pedestrians on london bridge. then a number of stabbings were carried out at nearby borough