This is the moment heroic cabbie David Perry holds his head in his hands as he staggers from his wrecked taxi – seconds after a Poppy Day suicide bomber detonated a ball-bearing device on the back seat.
Dramatic CCTV footage showed the scene as Emad Jamil Al Swealmeen launched his botched bid to maim patients at Liverpool Women’s Hospital just before 11am on Remembrance Sunday.
Glass is sent flying as the car’s windows blow out, before a plume of smoke billows upwards. Around nine seconds later, dazed driver Mr Perry opens his door and staggers out.
Despite his injuries, he warns others to stay away as he stumbles towards the hospital reception with his head in his hands. Half a minute later the car is engulfed in flames.
Security staff including a man in a high-vis jacket run towards the blaze to try to help the passenger, not realising he is a bomber.
His wife yesterday said it was an ‘utter miracle’ he survived with only minor injuries, as security sources revealed Al Swealmeen did not intend to set off the device in the taxi.
One suggested the detonators exploded but failed to set off the main charge, while others claimed the partition screen between him and the passenger saved his life.
Now, his wife has revealed Mr Perry is ‘doing ok but is extremely sore’, while adding that his escape was an ‘utter miracle’.
Rachel Perry wrote on Facebook: ‘I would just like to thank each and every one of you who has messaged asking how David is. He is doing ok but is extremely sore and trying to process what’s happened.
‘There are a lot of rumours flying round about him being a hero and locking the passenger inside the car. But the truth of the matter is, he is without doubt, lucky to be alive. The explosion happened whilst he was in the car and how he managed to escape is an utter miracle. He certainly had some guardian angels looking over him.’
Dramatic CCTV footage shows the scene as the bomb exploded outside Liverpool Women’s Hospital at 10.57am on Remembrance Sunday
Around nine seconds later, dazed driver David Perry opens his door and staggers out. Despite his injuries, he warns others to stay away as he stumbles towards the hospital reception with his head in his hands
These are the events that led to the explosion outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital yesterday and the arrests and raids that followed
Police at the sealed off house in Sutcliffe Street where three men were arrested last night and another suspect nearby
Nick Aldworth, a former counter-terrorism national co-ordinator, told BBC Radio 4’s Today that from what he has seen there is ‘very little blast damage’ indicating that whatever was in the vehicle was ‘low yield or didn’t work properly, or possibly an incendiary’.
David Videcette, a former 7/7 counter-terror detective at Scotland Yard, said: ‘The white smoke indicates the explosion was fuelled by some type of explosive, the fire then takes hold and the smoke changes colour as it consumes the car.
‘Improvised Explosive Devices have various components, with each having to operate in the correct order. It’s possible what we see here is a detonator explosion that has failed to set off the main charge.’
The male passenger killed in the blast had asked to go to the hospital around ten minutes from his home in Rutland Avenue, but friends of the taxi driver believe the target may have been less than a mile away at the city’s Service of Remembrance at Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral, where 1,200 military personnel, veterans and families of the fallen had gathered.
Police say the bomb was brought into the cab by the male passenger, who was the only person killed in the explosion. Reports also claim that Mr Perry had locked the doors to stop the suspect from running into the hospital with the bomb.
Boris Johnson hailed Mr Perry, 45 and a married father-of-two, telling reporters: ‘It does look as though the taxi driver in question did behave with incredible presence of mind and bravery.’
Friends have also described his escape as ‘a miracle’. One said: ‘I can’t believe he wasn’t more seriously injured. Let’s be honest we’re all lucky whoever made the bomb was a bit rubbish.’
Another added: ‘David’s the luckiest man in Britain, as well as the most heroic’.
Last night, a bomb squad carried out a controlled explosion near a house in Liverpool raided in connection to the bombing.
It is understood the explosion in Sefton Park was done ‘as part of the ongoing investigation into the terrorist incident’ outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital, and that residents ‘shouldn’t be concerned’.
The UK’s terror threat level was raised to ‘severe’ from ‘substantial’ following a COBRA meeting at Downing Street. Police and the security services advised the Prime Minister that another attack on British soil is now ‘highly likely’ following the bombing in Merseyside and the murder of Conservative MP Sir David Amess in Essex.
Mr Johnson dramatically urged the country to be ‘vigilant’, calling the blast a ‘stark reminder’ to the public of the risks of terrorism. It follows claims that the suspected terrorist settled in the UK from the Middle East several years ago and was unknown to Britain’s security services.
The Prime Minister told a Covid press briefing: ‘What [Sunday] showed above all is that the British people will never be cowed by terrorism, we will never give in to those who seek to divide us with senseless acts of violence. And our freedoms and our way of life will always prevail.’
Security staff including a man in a high-vis jacket run towards the blaze to try to help the passenger, not realising he is a bomber
Hero taxi driver David Perry pictured with his wife Rachel
This is the moment armed officers raided a property in Sutcliffe Street Liverpool with one marksman scaling the back wall with a ladder and pointing it at a man leaving the back door.
A squad of armed officers were heard telling the suspects to ‘get on the floor’ and ‘don’t f***ing move’ before taking three men away
A male was arrested in the area close to the house in Sutcliffe Street, Kensington. It is not known if he is the fourth suspect held by police over the taxi bombing
Officers are still searching two addresses – one in Sutcliffe Street and a second at Rutland Avenue in Sefton Park, where ‘significant items’, believed to include bomb making equipment, have been found.
Investigators have ‘attributed’ the bomber to both the addresses but police are not yet sure where he lived, and last night at 9.45pm anti-terror officers forced their way into the front and back of the Sutcliffe Street house as they tried to establish if he was a lone wolf or part of a cell.
Suspects were seen with their hands up in the rear yard, as officers trained their rifles on them and told them to get on the floor. Matthew Heitman, 26, who lives opposite the raided house, said: ‘Two of the men were marched out at gunpoint and they had them up against the wall. The people living there had not long moved in, maybe weeks or months.’
Another neighbour, Sharon Cullen, said she and her husband, 22-year-old daughter and two-year-old grandson were evacuated from their home. She said: ‘The police pounded on my door and an officer said ‘we need to get you out of the house as soon as possible’. They said ‘whatever is going on at the back of the house, it could blow the block’. It was really frightening.’
Mr Perry has been credited with saving many lives after keeping the suspect inside his cab in the moments before it blew up. His wife has revealed he is ‘doing ok but is extremely sore’, while adding that his escape was an ‘utter miracle’.
Rachel Perry wrote on Facebook: ‘I would just like to thank each and every one of you who has messaged asking how David is. He is doing ok but is extremely sore and trying to process what’s happened.
‘There are a lot of rumours flying round about him being a hero and locking the passenger inside the car. But the truth of the matter is, he is without doubt, lucky to be alive. The explosion happened whilst he was in the car and how he managed to escape is an utter miracle. He certainly had some guardian angels looking over him.’
Ahead of this afternoon’s COBRA meeting, the Prime Minister said Mr Perry acted with ‘incredible presence of mind and bravery’.
The Mayor of Liverpool, Joanne Anderson, added: ‘The taxi driver, in his heroic efforts, has managed to divert what could have been an absolutely awful disaster at the hospital’, adding that he had ‘locked the doors’ to keep the bomber in the back.
Speaking at a press conference this morning, Assistant Chief Constable Russ Jackson of Counter Terrorism North West said they know the identity of the taxi passenger and believe that he made the bomb.
He said: ‘It is not clear what the motivation for this incident is. Our enquiries indicate that an improvised explosive device has been manufactured and our assumption so far is that this was built by the passenger in the taxi.
‘The reason why he then took it to the Women’s Hospital is unknown, as is the reason for its sudden explosion. We are of course aware that there were Remembrance events just a short distance away from the hospital and that the ignition occurred shortly before 11am.
‘We cannot at this time draw any connection with this but it is a line of inquiry we are pursuing. Although, the motivation for this incident is yet to be understood, given all the circumstances, it has been declared a terrorist incident and counter-terrorism policing are continuing with the investigation. Our enquiries will now continue to seek to understand how the device was built, the motivation for the incident and to understand if anyone else was involved in it’.
It came as more details emerged yesterday about the bomber, including how a Christian couple who opened their home to him told of their shock last night after learning he launched the attack.
Al Swealmeen, also knows as Enzo Almeni, 32, was killed after a homemade ball-bearing device exploded inside a taxi he rode to Liverpool Women’s Hospital just seconds before the 11am minute’s silence.
Almeni, a failed asylum seeker with Syrian and Iraqi heritage who changed his name by deed poll from Emad Jamil Al Swealmeen to sound more Western, fled the Middle East several years ago and converted from Islam to Christianity in 2017 at the cathedral it is believed he wanted to attack.
He spent most of his time in the UK in Liverpool, and spent eight months living with devout Christians Malcolm and Elizabeth Hitchcott at their home in Aigburth.
Last night Mr Hitchcott, a former British Army soldier, said he felt ‘numbed’ to learn that the ‘lovely man’ who lived at his home for eight months was behind the plot. ‘It’s almost too impossible to believe,’ he told the Daily Mail. ‘There was nothing to suggest he could go on to become radicalised.’
He said Almeni had been arrested for possession of a ‘large knife’ after the rejection of his asylum claim in 2014, resulting in him being sectioned under the Mental Health Act and hospitalised for several months.
The couple described their ‘shock’ that Almeni – a ‘very quiet fellow’ – would try to commit an act of terror, telling ITV News they lived ‘cheek by jowl’ when he stayed with them at their home and that there was ‘never any suggestion of anything amiss’.
A tearful Mrs Hitchcott told the broadcaster: ‘What a waste of a life. But the one thing I suppose to be thankful for is that he did not kill anyone else.’
Mr Hitchcott said Almeni rejected Islam and converted to Christianity and was baptised and confirmed in Liverpool Cathedral in March 2017.
‘He first came to the cathedral in August 2015 and wanted to convert to Christianity,’ Mr Hitchcott told MailOnline. ‘He took an Alpha course, which explains the Christian faith, and completed it in November of that year. That enabled him to come to an informed decision and he changed from Islam to Christianity and was confirmed as a Christian by at least March 2017, just before he came to live with us. He was destitute at that time and we took him in.’
It is thought Almeni had wanted to attack the cathedral on Remembrance Sunday as 1,200 military personnel, veterans and families of the fallen gathered to observe the minute’s silence – but that traffic and road closures stopped him from getting there. It is believed he died after being locked in a cab by Mr Perry as it exploded into a fireball outside the hospital.
Detectives and MI5 spies are investigating whether the bombing was an Islamist-inspired attack. Security sources said Almeni’s mental health problems were ‘a key line of inquiry’ in understanding his motivation.
Police said Almeni was picked up in the Rutland Avenue area of the city. As the car reached the hospital’s passenger drop-off point, it exploded.
Police said he had been living at a hostel for asylum seekers – run by private contracting giant Serco – in Sutcliffe Street, Liverpool, ‘for some time’ before renting a ‘bomb factory’ two miles away in Rutland Avenue.
Al Swealmeen pictured with Malcolm and Elizabeth Hitchcott, the couple who took him in after he left the Middle East
Friends said Almeni was born Emad Jamil Al-Swealmeen to a Syrian father and an Iraqi mother, and is believed to have spent a large part of his life in Iraq
Al Swealmeen arrived in the UK several years ago, and mostly lived in Liverpool, where he was being supported by Christian volunteers from a network of churches who help asylum seekers, it is understood
Al Swealmeen pictured on the right being converted to Christianity in Liverpool’s Anglican Cathedral in 2017
Al Swealmeen pictured with Malcolm Hitchcott who took him in after Almeni left the Middle East for the UK several years ago
Four men arrested under terrorism laws in the Kensington area of Liverpool – three aged 21, 26 and 29, who were held on Sunday, and a man aged 20 who was detained on Monday – have now been released from police custody following interview, Counter Terrorism Police North West said on Monday night. MI5 is assisting police with the investigation.
Meanwhile, forensic officers continued the delicate task of searching the ‘bomb factory’ from where Almeni booked the taxi. Eight nearby homes have been evacuated, and officers on Monday carried out a controlled explosion on an item taken from the property in nearby Sefton Park in what they described as ‘a precaution’.
Detective Chief Inspector Andrew Meeks of Counter Terrorism Police North West said: ‘Our enquiries are very much ongoing but at this stage we strongly believe that the deceased is 32-year-old Emad Al Swealmeen.
‘Al Swealmeen is connected to both the Rutland Avenue and Sutcliffe Street addresses where searches are still ongoing. We believe he lived at the Sutcliffe Street address for some time and had recently rented the Rutland Avenue address. Our focus is the Rutland Avenue address where we have continued to recover significant items.
‘We continue to appeal for any information about this incident and now that we have released his name any information that the public may have about Al Swealmeen no matter how small may be of great assistance to us.’
The UK’s terror threat level was raised to ‘severe’ following an emergency COBRA meeting at Downing Street. Police and security services advised the Prime Minister that another attack on British soil is now ‘highly likely’. It came exactly a month after Conservative MP Sir David Amess was fatally stabbed during a constituency surgery in Leigh-on-Sea, Essex.
At a Covid press briefing yesterday, Boris Johnson dramatically urged the country to be ‘vigilant’ and called the blast a ‘stark reminder’ of the risks of terrorism.
Home Secretary Priti Patel cancelled a planned trip to Paris to discuss the Channel migrant crisis so she could be briefed on the Liverpool bombing.
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