Dozens injured as car rams into Liverpool soccer fans

Police in the northern UK city of Liverpool are seeking a motive after a man drove a vehicle into crowds of soccer fans on Monday evening, injuring around 50.

Officers believe the incident, which sent 27 people to hospital, with many others requiring treatment at the scene, was not terror-related. They were questioning a 53-year-old man pulled out from the vehicle.

The incident happened shortly after 6 pm, following a victory parade that brought tens of thousands of people onto the city's streets to celebrate Liverpool Football Club winning the Premier League.

The scene of the incident, Water Street, is full of bars and was closed to traffic at the time.

But despite the apparent similarities between the incident and ramming attacks perpetuated by radical Islamist terrorists, police have stressed that the suspect is white and British, with no known links to extremists.

Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent at the Metropolitan Police, told BBC Radio 5 Live that it is very unusual for the police to release the ethnicity of a suspect, but that officers clearly wanted to stop people from speculating and coming to the wrong conclusion.

He said people wrongly jumped to the conclusion that an Islamist extremist was responsible for the Southport attack in July 2024 that claimed the lives of three young girls, and mobs attacked asylum-seekers as a result during days of rioting.

"I think (releasing the suspect's ethnicity) was done to dampen down some of the speculation from the far right, that continues on X even as we speak, that this was a Muslim extremist," he told the BBC.

Liverpool City Region Mayor Steve Rotheram also urged people not to speculate about the motive and told the BBC on Tuesday morning there were "still four people who are very, very ill in hospital".

Merseyside fire chief Nick Searle said four of those who were injured, including a child, had been rescued from under the stationary vehicle.

BBC reporter Matt Cole, who witnessed the incident, said he saw the car plow through the crowd while being chased by a group of men "who were trying to bang on the side of it and throw things at it".

Another witness said the driver had been honking as he drove, while another said it looked as if the car had initially reversed into an ambulance before lunging forward.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer wrote on X that "the scenes in Liverpool are appalling — my thoughts are with all those injured or affected".

With most people off work for the Spring Bank Holiday, officials estimated that around 1 million people descended on the parade route.