A 53 year-old British man has been arrested after the car he was in ploughed into football fans celebrating Liverpool’s Premier League title victory.
Reports from The Guardian say up to 47 people were injured including four children - one who remains in a critical condition.
Emergency services swarmed to Water Street in the city centre after receiving calls just after 6pm local time as the parade was coming to a close.
The driver, a caucasian 53-year-old man from the Liverpool area, was arrested by police at the scene.
Authorities have stated that the incident is not being treated as terrorism as investigations continue into the man's motives or condition.
UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer urged people to “give the police the space they need to investigate”.
“The scenes in Liverpool are appalling – my thoughts are with all those injured or affected,” Starmer said in a statement.
Mayhem
Hundreds of thousands of people had turned out in torrential rain for the jubilant celebrations to see the Red side of Liverpool’s victory parade, with players driven around on an open-topped bus with fireworks.
The bus carrying the team had passed by Water Street just minutes before the car ran into the crowd, witnesses told media.
It’s not clear how many people were injured in the incident.
Talking with Sky News, witness Natasha Rinaldi, who was watching the parade from her friend’s living room, said “It was so loud. People sounded desperate. And then we looked out the window and we saw the car [had] run over people.”
“Then people started rushing to go after the driver and they tried to break the car,” she continued.
“The police did everything to block and to push people away.
“We could just hear screams and screams. We were very confused.”
Speaking with Azzet, Liverpool fan Oliver Grimaldi, who was at the title-winning parade, said the atmosphere had all the ingredients to exacerbate an incident such as this in the aftermath.
“It was mayhem,” Grimaldi said.
“It was raining non-stop, red smoke [from flares] had engulfed the city. There were well over 750,000 people, maybe even one million.
“People were getting squashed, pushed and shoved through bottlenecks, trying to overtake others when there’s nowhere to go.
“There were bottles, food, flares littered everywhere too.
“Just mayhem.”
