TheCable

Six people have died and 48 injured after a van deliberately ploughed into pedestrians on London Bridge.

After the bridge incident, three men armed with knives embarked on a stabbing rampage at nearby Borough Market.

The suspects have been shot dead.

Mark Rowley, Metropolitan police assistant commissioner, said the three men were wearing what appeared to be explosive vests but they turned out to be fake.

He added that all of the attackers were believed to have been killed but added that it was early in the investigation.

One of the those stabbed was a British transport police officer, who suffered serious but non-life threatening wounds.

Forty-eight people were taken to hospitals in London, the ambulance service said.

“This is a horrific terrorist attack… My message to Londoners is to be calm and vigilant today,” Sadiq Khan, London mayor said.

The attacks on London Bridge and at the market come two months after a driver plowed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in what authorities have called a terror attack, and almost two weeks after a deadly suicide bombing outside an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester.

Fabio Lamas was working at the Wheatsheaf Pub in Borough Market when he said he heard someone shout “knives, knives, knives” and he saw three people holding knives who appeared to be wearing body armor outside.

“A man moved to block the door, and people inside heard shooting outside,” Lamas said.

Witnesses at another Borough Market restaurant said an attacker entered and stabbed a woman, and its manager and others threw bottles at the men and staff pushed them out outside using a bar stool.

“I hear maybe six to eight gunshots and screams unlike I’ve ever heard before. People running — I’ve never ran so fast in my life,” Joe Dillon, an American grad student at Kings College, told MSNBC.

“I ran and I hid.”

Railway worker Matt Cooper said he was going out for a coffee near Borough Market and “I saw loads of people running towards me and I heard gunfire.”

He said he heard about 12 shots. Police told everyone to run.

Two nearby hospitals were locked down to protect patients and staff.