In the well-heeled district of Edgbaston, residents are struggling to understand how their quiet corner of Britain’s second city Birmingham could be linked to the deadly terror attack in London.
Overnight, armed police stormed an apartment on Hagley Road, wedged between restaurants selling pizza and Persian food, one of six locations raided just hours after a car and knife rampage outside the Houses of Parliament in Central London.
A cricket-loving area
The road is in the well-heeled district of Edgbaston — a cricket-loving corner of Britain’s second largest city that is unused to the sight of armed police blocking off streets.
A police cordon surrounded the flat on Hagley Road, with two local police officers standing guard outside the brown front door while detectives from London went inside.
The flat’s owner, Farhad Makanvand, turned up to collect the mail from the Shiraz restaurant next door, but he said he knew little about his tenants.
“I do own the flat but it is run by an agent. I have nothing to do with the tenants,” Mr. Makanvand told AFP, without giving his name.
The extent of Birmingham’s links to the attack has yet to become clear, but a car hire firm in Solihull on the city outskirts has confirmed that the Hyundai vehicle used in the attack was rented there.
The attacker was identified Thursday as 52-year-old Khalid Masood, who was known by “a number of aliases” and had a range of convictions including grievous bodily harm and possession of offensive weapons, according to London’s Metropolitan police.
Birmingham is home to large South Asian and Muslim communities, last year hosting Europe’s largest celebrations for the Eid festival. The proportion of Muslims in Birmingham is 21.8% of the population — compared to a national average of 4.5%, according to the latest census figures.
