London Bridge terrorist dumps phone to avoid tracking before attack

Three terrorists who murdered eight people had planned to mow people down on Oxford Street and set off Molotov cocktails, an inquest heard today.



Eight people were killed when Khuram Butt, 27, Rachid Redouane, 30, and Youssef Zaghba, 22, drove a van into pedestrians and stabbed others in the London Bridge area on June 3, 2017.



The trio had originally intended to target shoppers on the country's busiest shopping street using a hired 7.5-tonne lorry but changed their plan at the eleventh hour.



They also had a lethal arsenal of weapons in their van, blow torches and fake suicide vests, and planned to set off a firestorm of Molotov cocktails during their sickening rampage.



Chilling footage shown to the Old Bailey today shows Redouane buying bottles of wine later filled with petrol and 12in knives – which were later used to murder bystanders - from a Lidl store in East Ham in the days leading up to the massacre.



Police later found 29 bags of gravel in the white van which had been placed in the back in a bid to increase its weight and inflict more severe injuries.



Two blowtorches with canisters containing a mixture of butane and propane were also recovered.