The fatal stabbing of British Member of Parliament David Amess was a terrorist incident, police said on Saturday (Oct 16), at they investigated the second killing of a UK politician while meeting voters since 2016.
The Metropolitan Police said its preliminary findings had revealed "a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism".
Amess, a 69-year-old pro-Brexit Conservative lawmaker, was stabbed to death inside a church on Friday while holding a fortnightly consultation with his constituents in the small town of Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex, east of London.
Police arrested a 25-year-old man at the scene on suspicion of murder and recovered a knife.
Essex police said officers had responded "within minutes" to reports of the stabbing shortly after 12.05pm local time (7.05pm Singapore time) and arrived to find Amess had "suffered multiple injuries".
Paramedics fought to save his life on the floor of the church - where a sign says "All are welcome here: Where old friends meet and strangers feel at home" - but in vain.
"This was a difficult incident, but our officers and paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service worked extremely hard to save Sir David," Harrington said.
"Tragically he died at the scene."
A father of five who was first elected to parliament in 1983, Amess was memorialised with an impromptu evening mass while tributes poured in from across the political spectrum and around the world.
Multiple UK media outlets, citing sources, reported that the suspect was believed to be a British national with Somali heritage.
"The investigation is in its very early stages and is being led by officers from the specialist counter-terrorism command," Ben-Julian Harrington, Essex police's chief constable, told reporters.
"We made it clear at the time of the incident that we did not believe there was any immediate further threat to anyone else in the area," Harrington said.
"MUCH-LOVED"
The killing has sent shockwaves around Britain.
Flags were lowered to half-mast in Westminster as tributes were paid to Amess, whose death came five years after the murder of Labour party MP Jo Cox by a far-right extremist.
In a book last year called Ayes & Ears: A Survivor's Guide to Westminster, Amess noted that Cox's death had prompted new security guidance to lawmakers that threatened to limit their access to constituents.
"This sort of thing just was not supposed to happen in the UK," he wrote about Cox's killing.
"These increasing attacks have rather spoilt the great British tradition of the people openly meeting their elected politicians."
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2021-10-16 00:01:00Z
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