11 injured after car hits pedestrians in London, terrorism ruled out

British police have ruled out terrorism after detaining a man whose car struck a crowd of pedestrians in London on Saturday, leaving nearly a dozen people injured.

“Police have confirmed that today’s incident at Exhibition Road is not terrorist-related and is being treated as a road-traffic collision,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan tweeted.

London’s Metropolitan Police Service had said on Twitter than one man was detained in the South Kensington area of the city. The crash occurred around 2:20 p.m. outside the London Museum of Natural History, a popular tourist destination.

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Paramedics treated 11 people, primarily for leg and head injuries, and transported nine of them to the hospital, according to a statement from Peter McKenna, deputy director of operations for London Ambulance Service.

Authorities determined that the incident was a “road-traffic collision” after four hours of investigation.

Khan issued a statement earlier Saturday urging people to avoid the area.

A BBC reporter at the scene said that she saw a car moving “diagonally” across the road before the crash.

“I could see … a car diagonally across the road, looking like it was going into one of the boulders on the side of the road, and I could see a crowd of people around what was clearly one or two people on the pavement,” the reporter said.

“We have had lots of police coming onto the scene, helicopters above, and I can see an ambulance which is definitely having someone put in, but it isn’t clear how bad that injury is,” she continued.

A spokeswoman for the Natural History Museum told the BBC that “the Museum’s visitors and staff are always our first priority.”

“We are working with emergency services to assess the incident and we are doing all we can.” 

The incident comes as the terror threat level in Britain is at “severe,” its second-highest level, meaning that an attack is likely.

— Updated at 3:05 p.m.