A man caught up in the Houses of Parliament lockdown overheard a security guard receive a radio message saying “a policeman has been stabbed”.
Dennis Burns was walking into Parliament on Wednesday (March 22) afternoon when he was caught up in the ongoing incident .
Other witnesses reported seeing injured people with suspected gunshot wounds and bodies strewn on the road on Westminster Bridge.
Westminster attack
Mr Burns said: “As I was coming through the doors at Portcullis House, a policeman grabbed someone who was coming in and threw him out.
“As we were coming though the glass doors I was told by one security guard to get out while another one told me to get in.
“As I walked in I heard a security guard get a radio message saying ‘a policeman has been stabbed’.
“Then I walked in as police officers and security start rushing out of the front doors on to the street.
“When I got inside I was wondering what the hell was going on and I saw dozens of panicked people running down the street.
“It looked like they were running for their lives.”
Witness Don Brind heard shots being fired and saw two people apparently injured on the ground.
A researcher for MPs, he said: “I heard some shouting and saw some running out of the corner of my eye and then a short time after that there was a shot.
“I looked and I saw a civilian on the ground, with somebody standing over him with what I assumed to be a gun.
“Then I looked and, about 10 yards away, there was a yellow jacketed person on the ground, who appeared to be alive and talking.”
He said he assumed the person in the high-visibility jacket was a police officer.
A woman at the scene was on the opposite side of the square when she heard shots ring out at about 2.45pm.
She said: “We literally just heard shots and then saw people running, and we went to have a look.”
The woman, from South Africa and living in Ireland, said she and two friends went towards the palace gates and saw a man lying on the floor inside.
She said: “I saw a body, they were working on the floor. They were just inside the gates.
“He had one gunshot wound to the right side of his chest. I don’t know if he was dead or alive, but people were working on him.
“I saw that needed medical attention and I asked if I could help because I am a doctor, but they said they were fine.
“Then the police moved us back.”
Steve Voake, 55, was walking across Westminster Bridge towards the South Bank when he saw the aftermath.
He said he saw at least two bodies lying on the road and one in the water.
“I saw a trainer lying in the road and when I looked more closely I saw that there were a couple of bodies the other side of the road.
“And when I looked over the side there was another body lying in the water with blood all around it.”
Radoslaw Sikorski posted a video to Twitter purporting to show people lying injured in the road on Westminster Bridge.
Mr Sikorski, a senior fellow at Harvard Centre for European Studies, said he saw at least five people lying on the ground after being “mown down” by a car.
“I heard what I thought was just a collision and then I looked through the window of the taxi and someone down, obviously in great distress,” he told the BBC.
“Then I saw a second person down, and I started filming, then I saw three more people down, one of them bleeding profusely.”
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