The UK Telegraph is reporting a soldier who was walking on the street has been beheaded in Woolwich.

Several witnesses described seeing a "beheading" while another described seeing a man wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt being attacked with a machete-style knife and dumped.



Prime Minister David Cameron called a meeting of the Government's Cobra crisis committee, describing the incident as "truly shocking".



Cobra meetings are crisis response committees set up to coordinate the actions of different agencies, including the security services, police and local authorities.



The BBC reported sources had told them the men were shouting "Allahu Akbar" as they carried out the attack and had filmed carrying it out.



One witness, called James, told LBC radio: "We saw clearly two knives, meat cleavers, they were big kitchen knives like you would use in a butcher's, they were hacking at this poor guy, we thought they were trying to remove organs from him."

Regular police officers in England are not allowed to carry guns and have to wait for armed response teams to show up in serous situations. It took the armed response team 20 minutes to get to the scene. The suspects had big knives and a illegal gun to carry out their crime.

"Then two black guys got out of the car dragging a white guy across the road towards the wall.



"One of the guys had a knife that looked about a foot long and a machete and the other bloke had a gun.



"They started slashing him up with the knife and hitting him in the stomach with the machete.



"It must've taken about 20 minutes for the police to arrive, I think it must've been because they were waiting for armed police.

The man was heard saying: "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you," he said.

(Photo: ITV News)

This incident is alarming for obvious reasons, but the most important thing to point out is that this happened in a big city in the middle of the day. This did not happen on a battle field in the Middle East, but in Woolrich, England.

UPDATE: Video: