LONDON (AP) \u2014 A police boat responding to a report of a person in the River Thames crashed into Westminster Bridge in central London on Friday, launching officers into the water and injuring five of them, the Metropolitan Police said.<\/p>\n
Paramedics treated the wounded on a black inflatable boat as a police helicopter hovered overhead near the clock tower that houses the bell known as Big Ben.<\/p>\n
Four officers remained in the hospital Friday night with serious injuries but were expected to survive, police said.<\/p>\n
Witnesses said they saw two boats speeding up the river and heard a loud bang when one struck the bridge.<\/p>\n
Jim Bagley, who was visiting from the U.S., said the first boat kicked up a large wake as it went under the bridge and it appeared to push the second boat into the abutment. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe didn\u2019t see it happen, but we heard the explosion,\u201d Bagley said. \u201cThe next thing we saw was three people in the water, coming down the river.\u201d<\/p>\n
People on other boats helped pull the officers to safety. Police said no civilians were hurt.<\/p>\n
A large crowd gathered to watch as ambulances and fire crews responded but were eventually cleared from the bridge, which was closed to traffic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LONDON (AP) \u2014 A police boat responding to a report of a person in the River Thames crashed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1110038,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[7757],"tags":[748,393,4179,4884,302733,2003,257,134,16,15,85987,263],"class_list":["post-1110037","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-london","tag-britain","tag-england","tag-general-news","tag-great-britain","tag-jim-bagley","tag-law-enforcement","tag-london","tag-river-thames","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-waterways","tag-world-news"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/116979314704034320","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110037","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1110037"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1110037\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1110038"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1110037"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1110037"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1110037"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}