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British authorities with the help of Gardai, the national police service of Ireland have been able to reveal the identity and nationalities of the two assailants in charge of the terror attack that targeted London on Saturday 3rd of June. First it was Rachid Radouane, a Moroccan-Libyan national who lives in Ireland. The second attacker is also a Moroccan-Italian man named Youssef Zaghba and the third is a Pakistani-born called Khuram Butt.
According to Corriere Della Sera, an Italian online newspaper, Youssef Zaghba is a Moroccan-Italian born in Fes in January 1995 and son of «a Moroccan father and an Italian mother». The 22-year-old terrorist was stopped in March 2016 at Bologna airport trying to take a flight to Turkey on his way to Syria. The same source indicates that «Italian intelligence services had reported his presence and frequent movements to both Moroccan and British authorities».
Registered as «potential threat»
Zaghba later found a summer job in a restaurant in London and was still in contact with his mother who lives in Bologne. Corriere Della Sera, reports that the young man was registered by the Italian authorities as «a potential threat».
On the other hand, Gardai services the second London attacker is 30-year-old Moroccan-Libyan named Rachid Radouane who lives in Barking, a suburban town in the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham. «He was a chef who also used the name Rachid Elkhdar and police said he claimed to be Moroccan-Libyan», the BBC reported this morning.
After investigating the background of the London attackers, Gardai pointed out that Rachid Radouane «lived for a time in Dublin», reporting that «he may have been married to a 38-year-old woman currently in custody in the UK», as RTE wrote this morning.
Redouane was not known to the police as an extremist unlike his partner, Khuram Butt, who was «featured in a Channel 4 documentary last year about Islamist extremists with links to the jailed preacher Anjem Choudary», the BBC recalls.
On a Saturday night in London, the three knifemen, namely Youssef Zaghba, Rachid Radouane and Khuram Butt «ploughed into pedestrians in London Bridge using a van» they later went on to stab people near Borough market with 12-inch knives. The three attackers were wearing fake suicide vests and they were shot to death by the police. 7 people were killed that night, 36 are in London hospitals and 18 in a critical condition.
Saturday’s attack is the third one in a row that occurred in the UK. Two weeks ago, 22 people were killed in a bombing that targeted an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester. In March, five individuals were murdered in Westminster near the British Parliament when a man in a car and a knife hit and stabbed passerbys.
