It was a warm Saturday evening in early June, and the restaurants and pubs around Borough Market were full. At 10:07 p.m. on 3 June 2017, a white rental van mounted the pavement on London Bridge and drove into pedestrians at high speed. The van crashed at the southern end of the bridge on Borough High Street, and three men jumped out wearing what appeared to be suicide vests. They ran into Borough Market and began stabbing people in restaurants and bars. Eight minutes later, all three attackers were dead, shot by armed officers from the Metropolitan Police and City of London Police. The explosive vests were fakes. The attack was over in minutes. The grief would last far longer.
The van struck pedestrians on London Bridge first, injuring and killing people as it swerved across the pavement. After crashing, the three attackers, later identified as Khuram Butt, Rachid Redouane, and Youssef Zaghba, fanned out into Borough Market armed with ceramic knives and wearing fake explosive vests designed to cause maximum panic. They entered restaurants including the Boro Bistro and Black and Blue, stabbing diners and staff. Eight people were killed: Christine Archibald from Canada, James McMullan from Britain, Alexandre Pigeard from France, Sebastien Belanger from France, Kirsty Boden from Australia, Sara Zelenak from Australia, Xavier Thomas from France, and Ignacio Echeverria from Spain. Echeverria was killed while trying to defend a woman with his skateboard. Forty-eight people were injured, including four unarmed police officers who confronted the attackers with only batons.
The attack came less than three months after the Westminster Bridge attack on 22 March 2017, and just twelve days after the Manchester Arena bombing. Britain's terror threat level had been raised to critical, the highest category, after Manchester. In the aftermath of the London Bridge attack, stories of courage emerged alongside the horror. A British Transport Police officer fought the three attackers armed only with a baton and was seriously wounded. Romanian baker Florin Morariu hit one of the attackers with a crate. People in pubs barricaded the doors and threw furniture at the assailants. Within hours of the attack, the Metropolitan Police declared the incident over and began the painstaking process of investigating what went wrong in the intelligence that failed to stop it.
Borough Market reopened ten days after the attack, its traders returning to their stalls in an act of deliberate normalcy. Memorial plaques were placed on London Bridge and in the market. An inquest into the deaths, concluded in 2019, found that the eight victims had been unlawfully killed. The coroner praised the bravery of emergency services and members of the public who intervened. Ignacio Echeverria was posthumously awarded the George Medal for his courage. The attack prompted renewed debate about online radicalization, counter-terrorism intelligence sharing, and the use of vehicle barriers on bridges. Bollards and barriers were subsequently installed on London's bridges. At Borough Market, the life that the attackers tried to destroy, the simple act of sitting with friends over food and drink on a summer evening, carries on. The market is busier now than before the attack.
London Bridge is located at 51.5079N, 0.0877W, crossing the Thames between the City of London and Southwark. Borough Market is immediately south of the bridge's southern end. Nearest airports: London City (EGLC) 5 nm east, London Heathrow (EGLL) 16 nm west. Best viewed at 1,000-2,000 ft AGL. The Shard is visible nearby to the south.