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Police Announce New Arrest in London Attack, France Confirms Death of 2nd Citizen | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
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People stand around floral tributes on the south side of London Bridge near Borough Market after the terrorist attack in London, Britain, June 5, 2017. REUTERS/Peter Nicholls


British police on Wednesday said a 30-year-old man had been arrested as part of an investigation into the weekend London Bridge terror attack which left eight people dead and 48 injured.

Officers arrested him in the early hours of Wednesday in the eastern London suburb of Ilford, near Barking, where two of the assailants lived.

“A 30-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of the commission, preparation or instigation of terrorist acts,” police said.

The Saturday attack was claimed by ISIS and follows the May 22 suicide bombing at the Manchester Arena by Salman Abedi that killed 22 people.  

There are now two men in custody while another 12 people held following the attack have since been released.

The assailants drove a van into pedestrians on London Bridge, before descending into the nearby Borough Market where they stabbed people out for the night in the bars and restaurants.

Police have identified the attackers as Youssef Zaghba, a 22-year-old Italian national of Moroccan descent, Khuram Shazad Butt, 27, a Pakistan-born Briton, and Rachid Redouane, 30, a self-described Moroccan-Libyan dual national.

Meanwhile, Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Wednesday that a second French citizen has been confirmed killed in the attack.

“It is with great sadness that I have learned that one of the French citizens, who was previously given as unaccounted for, has been identified among those who have died,” Le Drian said in a statement.

The minister did not identify the new victim, but reports said it was Sebastien Belanger, 36.

Alexandre Pigeard, 26, who was working in a French restaurant in Borough Market, has already been confirmed as being among those killed in the attack.

Le Drian said a third French citizen remained missing. But London police later announced they had recovered a body from the River Thames in their search for Xavier Thomas, the missing 45-year-old French national.

“Formal identification has not yet taken place, however Mr. Thomas’ next of kin have been informed of this development,” police said in a statement.

The body was found late on Tuesday near London’s former dockyards in Limehouse, about two kilometres downstream from London Bridge.

The recovery of the body pushed the death toll to eight.