British police are investigating the murder of a man who was attacked with a machete near an army base in South London.

The victim was hacked to death with a machete-style knife in the Woolwich district in the southeast of the British capital on Wednesday before the attackers were shot by police.

A second meeting of the government's emergency COBRA security council has been held and British Prime Minister David Cameron is due to make a statement about the results.
The fault lies exclusively in the warped and deluded mindset of the people that did it.
Boris Johnson, Mayor of London 

Al Jazeera's Rory Challands, reporting from Westminster said that on leaving the meeting London Mayor Boris Johnson indicated that people could go about their business as usual.
"Reading in to this a little bit, it seems to be that political leaders do not seem to think this attack poses any greater threat to security," our correspondent said.

Johnson also made a statement ahead of the meeting in which he emphasised that religion should not be blamed.

"It is completely wrong to blame this killing on the religion of Islam," the mayor said.
"It is also wrong to draw a link between this and British foreign policy and soldiers risking their lives in the name of freedom.
"The fault lies exclusively in the warped and deluded mindset of the people that did it."

'British soldier'
Video footage filmed by an onlooker and broadcast by Britain's ITV news channel showed a man with hands covered in blood and holding a bloodied meat cleaver and a knife.

"I apologise that women had to witness this today but in our lands, our women have to see the same," he said. "You people will never be safe. Remove your government, they don't care about you."
Media reports suggest the victim was a serving British soldier, a claim which Britain's Ministry of Defence said it was urgently investigating.

Al Jazeera's Laurence Lee, reporting from Woolwich, said it was expected that Cameron will address parliament or make a statement on Thursday in a bid to return law and order to a situation that had become dominated by reactionary groups.

"The English Defence League, a far right group, wanted to use this to their advantage, they came out last night chanting 'no surrender to Muslims,' and clashed with riot police," our correspondent said.

"That expression of theirs has been widely echoed. There were two attacks on mosques overnight and there is a growing unease of unease about who this man was and whether he is part of a broader movement."
Witnesses said the victim was wearing a T-shirt of military charity Help for Heroes, which assists wounded British veterans.

He was reportedly first hit by a car before the two men in that vehicle came out with a machete and a gun and started to attack to man.
Witnesses said the attackers had approached police when they arrived and were then shot.
Police forensics officers investigated the crime
scene where the man was killed [Reuters]
Our correspondent, Laurence Lee, said people on social media platforms were expressing anti-Muslim sentiment after the incident as the men were said to have shouted "Allahu Akbar" as they attacked the man.
Security was tightened in the area and at all London barracks after the incident.
The Muslim Council of Britain condemned the attack, saying: "This is a truly barbaric act that has no basis in Islam and we condemn this unreservedly."

Shiraz Maher, of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at Kings College, told Al Jazeera that British security services have become good at foiling large-scale conspiracies.
He said al-Qaeda has now told Muslims in the West who are sympathetic to their cause to instead launch small-scale attacks, without talking to others, "maybe do it alone, or with another friend; get a knife, get a machete."

"As you see in those kind of attacks, it doesn't take much to cause widespread panic and fear, so they are almost impossible for police to guard against," he said.
Britain's involvement in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in the past decade has occasionally made soldiers a target at home.

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