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A horrified witness has spoken of his terror after seeing a woman lying on the ground with her 'throat cut' following the London Bridge attack that rocked the capital tonight.

Sun reporter Ben Leo arrived at the scene minutes after the atrocity and spotted at least six people motionless on the pavement.

He said: “One woman was frantically being attended to but she was lying in a massive pool of blood, absolutely still. It looked like her throat had been cut.

“I turned to my left and saw two more men with mangled legs — again lying motionless on the pavement."

(Image: PA) (Image: REUTERS)

Ben said the van appeared to have crashed into a lamppost at the bottom of London Bridge.

"Nobody knew what was going on — people were screaming and walking around completely stunned," he said.

Other witnesses revealed the moment the van ploughed into pedestrians in central London this evening before a gang of men got out and reportedly stabbed bystanders.

"He swerved right round me and then hit about five or six people"

Holly Jones, a BBC reporter at the bridge when the incident happened, said a van had swerved off the road into a crowd of pedestrians.

"A white van driver came speeding - probably about 50mph - veered of the road into the crowds of people who were walking along the pavement," she told BBC News.

"He swerved right round me and then hit about five or six people. He hit about two people in front of me and then three behind.

(Image: PA)

"I'd say there are about four severely injured people. They all have paramedics assisting them at the moment."

"Run as fast as you can"

A Sun reporter told Mirror.co.uk that she saw a body being taken away after hearing what sounded like a gun shot.

The reporter, who works at News UK, just metres from the scene, said she'd heard reports that seven people had been stabbed.

Members of the public were told by police to "run as fast as they could" westbound.

"There was a guy lying on the floor... he looked in a bad way"

Nick Archer, who was in the London Bridge area, told Sky News: "We came out (of a bar) on to the road and looked and looked to my left and there as a guy, I thought he was just drinking but he was lying on the floor.

"And then a couple of seconds later, about three police vans flew past.

"He looked in a bad way."

(Image: PA)

"They just went randomly along Borough High Street stabbing people"

Others said they saw three men, described as being 'of Mediterranean origin', jump out of the van and began 'randomly stabbing people' along Borough High Street with '12-inch long knives'.

A cab driver told LBC that three men jumped out of the van.

He said: "They just had these long blades, about 12 inches long. They just went randomly along Borough High Street stabbing people.

"A young girl got stabbed in the chest, she was laying there - it's so sad.

"I thought, 'I'm gonna try and hit him, I'm gonna try and knock him down'. I spun the cab round, I was about to ram one of them, but he side-stepped and three police officers came running towards them with their batons drawn.

'I was shouting at everybody, just get away from the area, stay back, just run the other way.

"There were a good few hundred people out there.'"

(Image: PA)

"It was tremendous gunfire"

Tony Murphy, who has a flat opposite Southwark Bridge, said he heard 'rapid gunfire'.

He said: "I'm actually former military. I heard what was significant gunfire.

"At first I thought it was fireworks but it was so rapid I recognised what it was.

"It went on for quite a long time. The response took about 10 minutes. I immediately text my family and they said they heard it.

"It was tremendous gunfire."

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(Image: Sky News)

"She was bleeding heavily from the neck and from her mouth"

Alex Shellum was in The Mudlark pub, close to London Bridge, at around 10pm when a woman in her early 20s "staggered into the pub".

"She was bleeding heavily from the neck and from her mouth," he told BBC News.

"It appeared to myself and to my friends that her throat had been cut. People went to her aid."

He said the pub was then closed and armed police told them to leave the area.

He said: "I could see on my left a further individual was having CPR performed on them by the emergency services."

(Image: PA)

"He was aiming for groups of people... I thought this was the Westminster attack all over again"

A witness who doing a night photography class on London Bridge said she saw the van veering on and off the pavement on the bridge.

"It looked like he was aiming for groups of people. I froze because I didn't know what to do," Mark Roberts, a 53-year-old management consultant, told Reuters.

"It was horrendous."

"I was thinking: Which way do I run to get away?" he said, adding that the van then veered onto the other side of the bridge before hitting a girl.

"I immediately thought this was the Westminster attack all over again."

(Image: twitter)

"It was a rampage... there was a shout of 'this is for Allah'"

Witness Eric was on the south side of London Bridge when he saw the van on the wrong side of the road.

He told BBC Radio 5Live: "It veered to the right and people were trying to run away from it."

When it stopped, he said three people got out and he thought they were going to help the people who had been hit.

"But the three people literally started kicking them, punching them, and took out knives. It was a rampage really," he said.

"The three men ran off towards the nearby bars and restaurants and there was a shout of "this is for Allah", he added.