ISIS Claims Responsibility for Deadly London Bridge Rampage

Islamic State says that Usman Khan, a 28-year-old British man who on Friday stabbed two people to death and wounded three more in London before being killed by police, was an ISIS member doing the group’s bidding. Khan, wearing what turned out to be a fake suicide vest, had ostensibly gone to a conference of paroled prisoners at a hall near London Bridge when he began a rampage that ended on the bridge itself, where he was overpowered by private citizens before being shot by police officers. He served time after being convicted in 2012 in connection with a plot to blow up London’s stock exchange and other targets. The ISIS claim, made Saturday through its Amaq news agency, noted that the Islamist group’s adherents were being called on to strike out at countries that had helped remove it from territory it held until earlier this year as part of a “caliphate” in Syria and Iraq. On October 29, ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi killed himself and at least one of his children during a US Special Forces raid on his hideout in northwestern Syria.