Domestic TerrorismLabor MP killed near Leeds by gunman shouting “Britain First!”

Britain contends with ever-more-violent anti-muslim, anti-immigrant extremist groups // Source: theconversation.com

Jo Cox, 41, a Labor MP for Batley and Spen, has been shot and stabbed to death Thursday by a man shouting “Britain First!”

She was attacked outside a library in the town of Birstall, West Yorkshire.

The police said that the attacker, a 52-year-old man who was not identified, was arrested in the area.

Hichem Ben Abdallah, who works at the Azzurro Cafe adjacent to the library, told theIndependent:”I saw a river of people running downhill down the street, screaming. It wasn’t a normal scream that you hear, it was a scream like they’d seen something shocking.

“The customers and I went outside and I saw a guy with a baseball cap, of medium height, roughing up someone, moving and kicking his legs.”

Ben Abdallah said he saw the attacker pull out a gun.

“It looked like a makeshift gun. It was chunky, like a cucumber. It wasn’t like a normal gun you see, but like an old-style hand gun,” he said.

“He fired the first shot, then the second shot. There was probably three or four seconds between them.”

A separate eyewitness, Clarke Rothwell, said Cox was shot three times with what looked like “an old gun… like a musket,” once in the face.

Rothwell, a 42-year-old gas engineer, told the Huddersfield Examiner: “I was outside the sandwich shop close to the Library when I heard a popping sound.

“I looked round and there was a guy standing over a woman on the floor. He seemed to have what looked like an old gun, like a musket, in his hand and he shot her again in the middle. He then seemed to shoot a third time, towards her head or face.”

Graeme Howard, 38, who lives in nearby Bond Street, told the Guardian he heard the man shout “Britain First” before the shooting and during the arrest.

“I heard the shot and I ran outside and saw some ladies from the cafe running out with towels,” he said. “There was loads of screaming and shouting and the police officers showed up.

“He was shouting ‘Britain First’ when he was doing it and being arrested. He was pinned down by two police officers and she was taken away in an ambulance.”

A West Yorkshire police spokesman said: “At 12.53 today, police were called to a report of an incident on Market Street, Birstall, where a woman in her 40s had suffered serious injuries and is in a critical condition.

“A man in his late 40s to early 50s nearby also suffered slight injuries. Armed officers attended and a 52-year-old man was arrested in the area. There are no further details at present.

“Police presence in the area has been increased as a reassurance to the community.”

Britain First, founded in 2011, is a far-right political party campaigning against immigration, multiculturalism, and what it sees as the Islamization of Britain. The party says it wants to restore traditional British culture.

The group is also tied to Ulster loyalist – Northern Ireland activists who want Northern Ireland to remain part of the United Kingdom — and its rallies are protected by a small group of violent vigilantes who call themselves the Britain First Defense Force.

Members of Britain First Defense Force conduct what they call “Christian patrols” outside of mosques and the homes of Muslim leaders.

Cox was elected to parliament in 2015, after working as a head of policy and humanitarian campaigning for Oxfam.

She chaired the all-party parliamentary group for Friends of Syria, and was vocal in making the case for military action in the country last autumn, on humanitarian grounds.

Her husband is former Labor advisor Brendan Cox, who stepped down as a senior executive of the charity Save the Children last year.