‘Driver’s heroism averts disaster’ after ‘terrorist’ taxi blast injures him, kills passenger, outside UK hospital on Remembrance Sunday

Liverpool’s mayor says cabby locked car door so his passenger, bound for women’s hospital, could not get out

Passenger died, driver escaped, when ‘improvised device’ exploded; counterterrorism police arrest four, said to be dead man’s associates

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Surveillance camera footage shows a man extinguishing a burning taxi following an explosion outside Liverpool Women's Hospital in Britain on November 14. Photo via Reuters

Published: 2:47am, 15 Nov 2021Updated: 10:24pm, 15 Nov 2021

Police in Britain on Monday said they were treating a deadly blast outside a hospital in Liverpool as a “terrorist incident” involving a home-made bomb that was reportedly foiled by a quick-thinking taxi driver.

Russ Jackson, the head of Counterterrorism Policing in northwest England, said Sunday’s explosion at Liverpool Women’s Hospital was caused by “the ignition of an explosive device” assumed so far to have been built and brought into the vehicle by the passenger, who died in the explosion.

“Although the motivation for this incident is yet to be understood, given all the circumstances, it has been declared a terrorist incident,” he told a press briefing.

Russ Jackson, head of Counterterrorism Policing in northwest England, in a press conference on Monday after a fatal explosion in a taxi outside the Liverpool Women's Hospital on Sunday. The incident is being treated as terrorism related.

He believed police knew the man’s identity but could not disclose it. He said it was unclear why the passenger had wanted to go to the hospital or what had caused the sudden explosion of the device.

Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said the taxi driver locked the doors of his cab so the passenger could not leave.