Ivanka Trump on Monday expressed solidarity with worshipers attacked while leaving a London mosque, while her father — usually quick to condemn extremist attacks — was silent for the time being.
‘Sending love and prayers to the victims in #FinsburyPark London. We must stand united against hatred and extremism in all it’s [sic] ugly forms,’ Ivanka, a top presidential advisor, tweeted.
President Trump has taken to Twitter during previous terror attacks to make the case for tighter restrictions on travel from predominantly Muslim countries.
He has also yet to offer public comments on the deaths of seven US sailors, who were killed during a collision between their US navy destroyer and a Philippine-flagged cargo ship.
Ivanka tweeted again with a wider message about peace, linking to a lengthy quote from Brazilian author Paul Coelho, whose work The Alchemist has been a worldwide bestseller.
The quote was credited as being from the 2014 foreword to the book.
Her message about ‘reconciliation’ came as her husband Jared Kushner prepared to head for the Middle East to discuss a peace deal involving Israel and the Palestinians which his father-in-law has asked him to work on.
In the London attack, a van plowed into a crowd of Muslims near Finsbury Park Mosque early on Monday, leaving one person dead and injuring 10 others in the second terror attack this month in the British capital.
Britain’s prime minister Theresa May, condemned the ‘sickening’ incident, saying Britain’s determination to fight ‘terrorism, extremism and hatred… must be the same, whoever is responsible’.
Police held back crowds after they arrested the Finsbury Park terror suspect who smirked and tried to goad witnesses to his Islamophobic attack into killing him.
The 48-year-old driver, who was not known to police and MI5, plowed his white van into a crowd of Ramadan worshipers helping an elderly man who collapsed in the heat, killing one and injuring at least ten more at 12.20am this morning.
The unnamed white man in a blue T-shirt – who suffered a black eye and cuts to his face and hands – was filmed repeatedly shouting ‘kill me’ to the men who grabbed him.
Officers held back crowds after arresting the terror suspect who was smiling, waving and even blowing kisses, with police today praising the ‘restraint’ shown in aftermath of the van attack.
Witnesses said he ‘deliberately’ drove onto the pavement outside north London’s Muslim Welfare House – yards from the Finsbury Park Mosque – and jumped out of the cab shouting ‘I’m going to kill all Muslims – I did my bit’.
But as he tried to run from the scene a group of men gave chase and were filmed pinning the suspect to the floor before dragging him along the road as bodies lay strewn across the ground.
The mosque’s imam Mohammed Mahmoud was among those on top of him and as one member of the public kicked the suspect in the head he yelled: ‘Don’t hit him – you do not touch him – hand him into the police’.
Today Mr Mahmoud called for calm and forgiveness as he spoke outside Finsbury Park Mosque and said: ‘By God’s grace we managed to surround him and to protect him from any harm.
‘That’s all we did. It wasn’t me alone – there was a group of brothers who were calm and collected and managed to extinguish any flames of anger.’
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