The London Bridge incident is being investigated as terrorism, and former U.S. law enforcement officials are not surprised.
Just two weeks after the deadly attack at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, the United Kingdom is responding to as many as three different incidents, including a van crashing into a crowd at the London Bridge and a series of stabbings reported at nearby Borough Market.
“It appears to be ISIS related—this is the result of the West not recognizing that we are at war,” former member of the FBI National Joint Terrorism Task Force, Steve Rogers, told Fox News. “The United Kingdom Is learning that they must change their rules of engagement and their national policies regarding immigration.”
Former deputy secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush, James Norton, told Fox News that this attack, reportedly occurring in multiple locations throughout London, is similar to that of the Paris attacks in November 2015.
“This is another ISIS style attack that we have seen in France, using vehicles as a weapon, as well as knives and other day to day items as weapons of terror,” Norton told Fox News.
The U.K. saw a similar knife-style attack on the Westminster Bridge on March 22, with five people, including a London police officer, who was stabbed, and the perpetrator, were killed. More than 40 people were injured outside the Parliament building.
Other terror attacks against the West in recent months involving vehicles and knives include the December attack on the German Christmas market, when a large truck plowed through crowds of people, killing 12 and injuring 48 others; the November attack at Ohio State University when a student ran his car into a group of students and slashed them with a butcher knife; and in Nice, France, when a truck drove through a crowd on Bastille Day, killing 77 people.
“This threat speaks to the real issue of homegrown terror and radicalization that has been compounded with lax immigration policies in the U.K.,” Norton told Fox News. “The U.K. is just weeks away from an election, and one of the motivations could be to disrupt the process.”