London police are hunting a masked suspect after a man entered a Mosque with a gun, which was discharged, on Thursday evening.
The incident took place during Ramadan prayers at the Seven Kings Mosque on High Road, Ilford in East London when a masked man entered the building. He was taken outside by worshippers, at which point a gun was discharged.
A Metropolitan Police statement on the incident said officers believed the incident may be related to an altercation that took place near the mosque earlier in the evening. The statement said that while investigators were open-minded as to the motive of the attack, “the incident is not being treated as an Islamophobic, hate crime or terror related incident”.
Ballistic evidence from the scene suggests the discharge was from a “blank firing handgun”.
Additional details from eyewitnesses are reported by the Daily Telegraph newspaper which states two men had been arguing on the street, the armed man following another into the mosque and later fired the pistol into the air. The paper also quotes the remarks of the mosques’ imam, Mufti Suhail, who said that the assailant fled the scene when “brothers standing guard at the mosque” intervened.
No arrests have yet taken place.