Speaking outside her Downing Street residence, May said the attack was “a reminder that terrorism, extremism and hatred take many forms and our determination to tackle them must be the same, whoever is responsible”.

May said the attack was “every bit as sickening as those that have come before”, referring to three Islamist-inspired attacks in London and Manchester this year that have killed 35 people and injured around 200.

The attack “targeted the ordinary and the innocent… this time British Muslims as they left the mosque,” she said, adding that police would provide any additional protection needed for mosques.

“This was an attack on Muslims near their place of worship and like all terrorism, in whatever form, it shares the same fundamental goal: it seeks to drive us apart,” she said.

“There has been far too much tolerance of extremism… including Islamophobia,” she said, announcing the creation of a new commission to fight extremism in the same way as racism.

Police said in a statement there were “a number of casualties”, adding that they were called to reports of “a vehicle in collision with pedestrians” at 00:20 am (2320 GMT).

“We have been informed that a van has run over worshippers as they left #FinsburyPark Mosque. Our prayers are with the victims,” the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), an umbrella body, said on Twitter.

Harun Khan, the head of the MCB, said the van had “intentionally” run over people leaving night prayers for the holy month of Ramadan.

An AFP reporter could see a helicopter overhead and several emergency vehicles at the scene on Seven Sisters Road, a busy thoroughfare.

Police, including armed officers, could be seen manning a wide cordon around the area. Others searched the area with sniffer dogs.

A group of Muslim men could be seen praying on the pavement nearby. Traffic was shut down along a one-kilometre section of Seven Sisters Road.

“We saw lots of people shouting and lots of people injured,” David Robinson, 41, who arrived just after the accident, told AFP.

Cynthia Vanzella, who lives near the scene, said on Twitter: “Horrible to watch police officers doing cardiac massage at people on the floor, desperately trying to save them. I just hope they did.”

MCB deputy head Miqdaad Versi said the incident happened “outside the Muslim Welfare House”, which is on Seven Sisters Road near the mosque.

The London Ambulance Service said: “We have sent a number of ambulance crews, advance paramedics and specialist responses teams to the scene.

“Our priority is to assess the level and nature of injuries and ensure that those most in need are treated first and taken to hospital.”

Police described it as a “major incident”.

‘Evil violence’

Finsbury Park mosque was once a notorious hub for radical Islamists but has entirely changed in recent years under new management.

Its former imam Abu Hamza was jailed for life in New York on terrorism charges in 2015.

He preached there from 1997 to 2003 before being jailed for inciting violence. He was later extradited to the United States.

In 2015, the mosque was one of around 20 that took part in an open day organised by the MCB to promote better understanding of Islam following Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in Paris.

Despite the change in leadership and new focus on community relations, the mosque reported it had received a string of threatening emails and letters in the wake of the Paris attacks.

“If this attack is confirmed as a deliberate terrorist attack then this should be classed as an act of terrorism,” said Mohammed Shafiq, head of the Ramadhan Foundation community group.

“The British Muslim community requires all decent people to stand with us against this evil violence,” he said, adding that “rampant Islamophobia has been on the rise for a number of years”.

Cage, a Muslim human rights group, said there had been “an epidemic rise in anti-Muslim hate crimes”.

“We urge all to remain calm and do their utmost not to inflame an already volatile and distressing situation,” it said in a statement.

Spike in anti-Muslim crime

Monday’s incident in London follows an Islamist-inspired attack on June 3 in which three militants wearing fake suicide vests ran over pedestrians and went on a stabbing spree in bars in the London Bridge area.

They killed eight people before being shot dead by police.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said following that attack that there had been a 40-percent increase in racist incidents in the city and a fivefold increase in the number of anti-Muslim incidents.

On his Facebook page, Khan at the time called on Londoners “to pull together, and send a clear message around the world that our city will never be divided by these hideous individuals who seek to harm us and destroy our way of life”.

Britain has seen two other attacks this year.

On March 22, a man drove a rented car into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge in London and stabbed a police officer guarding the British parliament to death before being shot dead.

Five people were killed in the attack.

On May 22, a suicide bomber blew himself up outside a pop concert in Manchester, killing 22 people.

The North Korean foreign ministry said US officials seized a diplomatic package from its delegation at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Friday as the diplomats were about to fly home, according to the state news agency.

Pyongyang called on Washington to explain what it called a “provocation”, KCNA reported.

“As the diplomats vigorously resisted, they grabbed the diplomatic package using physical violence and made off,” the ministry was quoted as saying.

North Korea, a one-party state that maintains prison camps and has a dire record on human rights, has for decades pursued a nuclear weapons programme, despite global condemnation and successive rounds of UN sanctions.

US President Donald Trump has made “solving” the peninsula’s problem a top priority for his administration.

The North Korean delegation was in New York to attend the Conference of States Parties to the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, the KCNA report said.

It added that the ministry also asked the international community to “seriously reconsider” New York as a venue for major international events.

“If the US fails to give its due response to our demand which is all too reasonable and fair, it will be totally responsible for all the consequences to be entailed,” the ministry was quoted as saying.

The new assembly is due to be transformed with a new generation of lawmakers — younger, more female and more ethnically diverse — winning seats in the afterglow of Macron’s success in last month’s presidential election.

The scale of the change is forecast to be so large that some observers have compared the overhaul to 1958, the start of the present presidential system, or even the post-war rebirth of French democracy in 1945.

It is also entirely unexpected: Macron was unknown three years ago and initially given little chance of emerging as president, but he and his 15-month-old Republique en Marche (Republic On the Move, (REM) party have tapped into widespread desire for change.

And yet despite the zest for renewal the vote has failed to generate much excitement.

Official statistics showed turnout at midday down more than three points over the last election in 2012 at 17.75 percent, revealing a degree of election fatigue.

REM and its allies are forecast to win 400-470 seats in the 577-strong parliament, one of the biggest post-war majorities that would give the pro-EU Macron a free hand to implement his business-friendly programme.

Desperately seeking an opposition

Sunday’s voting is the decisive second round of the election after a first round last weekend that was topped by REM and which was also marked by low turnout.

If confirmed, REM’s crushing win will come at the expense of France’s traditional parties, the rightwing Republicans and Socialists, but also the far-right National Front which faces major disappointment.

The Socialists are set to be the biggest victim of voters’ desire to reject establishment figures associated with years of high unemployment, social unrest and lost national confidence.

Pollsters predict the party will lose well over 200 seats after its five years in power under former president Francois Hollande, leaving them with only around 20.

“People are tired of always seeing the same faces,” said Natacha Dumay, a 59-year-old teacher voting in the northeastern Paris suburb of Pantin where Socialist former justice minister Elisabeth Guigou was voted out a week ago.

“Even if we don’t know the new faces it’s not important. We’re not voting for individuals but for a programme,” she added.

The main concern for observers and critics is the likely absence of any political counterweight to Macron, leading some to forecast that opposition could be led through street protests or in the media.

“Desperately seeking an opposition,” declared the front page of Saturday’s Le Parisien newspaper.

Virtual unknowns

Turnout will be closely watched after it hit a nearly 60-year low in the first round, leading some to warn Macron that his mandate is not as strong as he thinks.

REM won 32 percent of the total number of votes cast in the first round, but this represented only about 15 percent of registered voters.

“Go and vote!” Prime Minister Edouard Philippe urged on Thursday, calling it both “a right and a responsibility”.

Around half of REM’s candidates are virtual unknowns drawn from diverse fields of academia, business or local activism. They include a mathematician, a bullfighter and a former Rwandan orphan.

“You could take a goat and give it Macron’s endorsement and it would have a a good chance of being elected,” political analyst Christophe Barbier joked recently.

In some areas of Paris, the comment prompted a guerrilla campaign to replace photographs of REM candidates with a picture of a goat on their posters outside voting stations.

The other half of Macron’s loyalists are a mix of centrists and moderate left- and right-wing politicians drawn from established parties including ally MoDem.

Le Pen in action

Key battles on Sunday include far-right leader Marine Le Pen’s attempt to win her first seat in parliament in the northeastern former coal mining town of Henin-Beaumont.

Her victory would be a rare bright spot for Le Pen’s nationalist and anti-EU party which was once hoping to emerge as the principal opposition to Macron in parliament.

The firebrand and influential leader of new far-left party France Unbowed, Jean-Luc Melenchon, is also seeking a seat representing the Mediterranean port of Marseille.

Macron’s programme includes radical labour market reforms, measures to deepen European integration and an overhaul of the social security system.

He has vowed to take on French unions by creating a system of “flexi-security” inspired by Scandinavian countries which combines a solid state-funded safety net with company-friendly legislation.

His confident start at home, where he has concentrated on trying to restore the lost prestige of the president, and his decisive action on the international stage has led to a host of positive headlines.

The European front cover of The Economist magazine this week asks whether Macron is “Europe’s saviour” and depicts him walking on water.

Brexit minister David Davis will travel to Brussels to meet Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, to kick off hugely complex withdrawal negotiations that are expected to conclude within two years.

Worried by immigration and loss of sovereignty, Britain last year voted to end its decades-old membership of the 28-country bloc — the first state ever to do so — in a shock referendum result.

The government has developed a strategy of so-called “hard Brexit”: leaving the European single market and the customs union in order to control immigration from the EU.

But that entire approach has come under question following the June 8 general election in which Prime Minister Theresa May lost her centre-right Conservative party’s parliamentary majority.

May has clung on to power but has so far failed to conclude an agreement with Northern Ireland’s ultra-conservative Democratic Unionist Party that would bolster her ability to govern.

The Conservatives now have only 317 MPs in the 650-seat House of Commons and need the support of the DUP’s 10 MPs to command a razor-thin majority.

The government is due to present its legislative programme at the opening of parliament on Wednesday, which will be followed by a key confidence vote several days later.

Adding to what Queen Elizabeth II called the “sombre national mood” have been three terrorist attacks in three months and a fire in a London tower block in which 58 people are presumed dead.

Softer strategy on Brexit

The government’s current weakness has fuelled criticism of its approach to Brexit and given rise to notions that the government might pursue a softer tone.

Some Conservatives have called for a more inclusive approach that would include opposition parties as well as stronger voices from Scotland and Northern Ireland, where a majority of voters backed Britain to stay in the EU.

Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson, who is newly influential after winning a crucial 13 seats in Scotland, has said Britain should prioritise “freedom to trade and our economic growth”.

But finance minister Philip Hammond confirmed Sunday that Britain would still be leaving the EU, the single market and the customs union.

“We will leave the customs union when we leave the European Union. That’s a statement of legal fact,” he told BBC television.

He said he wanted post-Brexit trade with the EU that was not just free from tariffs but also delays and bureaucracy.

But Hammond said transitional arrangements would be necessary, to give business greater certainty.

“If we’re going to radically change the way we work together, we need to get there via a slope, not via a cliff edge,” he said.

Broadest possible consensus

Monday’s negotiations are to start in Brussels at 11 am (0900 GMT) with 90 minutes of talks between Barnier and Davis, followed by a working lunch between the pair, and a press conference.

Working groups will be set up to focus on three key areas — the status of EU citizens living in Britain and British citizens living in the EU; the divorce bill for Britain; and the future of the Northern Irish border with EU member Ireland.

Britain and the EU are already at odds over the order of the talks, with London insisting future trade ties should be discussed at the same time as the divorce despite opposition from Brussels.

And Hammond described the divorce bill figures being bandied around in Brussels as “the most egregious pre-negotiation posturing”.

The negotiations have been called the most complex in Britain’s history as it unravels 44 years of membership and its threat to walk out with no deal in place has worried European capitals.

No deal would be “very, very bad” for Britain, Hammond said, but worse would be a deal “deliberately structured to punish us, to suck the lifeblood out of our economy”.

The chancellor said he would reject any deal “designed to destroy us”.

The government on Saturday said parliament would hold a special two-year session starting this week, sitting for double the normal time to allow it to overhaul EU legislation.

International Trade Minister Liam Fox will travel to Washington on Monday to explore new trade ties — although no formal negotiations are possible until Britain has actually left the bloc.

The incident happened when Flight MU744 from Charles de Gaulle Airport was descending to land at Kunming Changshui International Airport in Yunnan province, Xinhua news agency reported.

Passengers are being treated for bone fractures, scalp lacerations and soft tissue injuries caused by falling baggage or collisions with overhead lockers, it cited local hospitals as saying.

“We felt strong turbulence twice and minor turbulence three times. The process lasted about 10 minutes,” the agency quoted a slightly injured passenger surnamed Zhang as saying.

The nationalities of the other injured passengers are unclear.

China Eastern Airlines said on its official microblog account that it has arranged medical services but gave no other details.

“(We) remind all passengers, for your safety, please fasten safety belts,” the post added.

The airline did not respond to questions from AFP.

The plane landed around 9 am (0100 GMT) on Sunday, an hour later than scheduled, according to Xinhua.

“We applauded when the plane landed safely. We feel lucky the plane did not crash,” an injured passenger surnamed Shang was quoted as saying.

“The MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN agenda is doing very well despite the distraction of the Witch Hunt,” the Republican leader tweeted while away on his first weekend to Camp David, the official US presidential retreat in the mountains of western Maryland.

“Many new jobs, high business enthusiasm,” he wrote Sunday, also pointing to his successful nomination of conservative justice Neil Gorsuch to the top US court.

“Infrastructure, Healthcare and Tax cuts in the works!” he continued.

Sunday’s tweets followed Trump’s furious Twitter outburst on Friday in which he announced he is under investigation in connection with a probe into alleged Russian election meddling that has dogged the administration and gained steam in recent weeks.

A source on Trump’s legal team claimed the president was referring to a Washington Post story “from the other night” rather than confirming he is being investigated.

The daily was one of several media that reported that Trump himself is being investigated on allegations of obstructing justice.

Trump is accused of firing FBI director James Comey over his refusal to steer the Russia investigation away from former national security advisor and Trump ally Mike Flynn.

The US president has denied trying to influence the investigation, but has acknowledged in an interview that Russia was on his mind when he dismissed Comey.

Trump left Saturday with his wife and young son to spend the weekend at Camp David for the first time, and is scheduled to return to Washington late Sunday.

The military aircraft plunged into the sea during a routine flight from the southern city of Myeik to Yangon on June 7.

Most of its passengers were the wives and children of servicemen.

Navy vessels and fishing trawlers have so far recovered 92 bodies plus some pieces of plane debris from off the coast of the southern town of Dawei.

Last week a fishing boat snagged a piece of the Shaanxi Y8’s tail.

On Sunday Myanmar’s army chief said the black box, which consists of a digital flight data recorder and a cockpit voice recorder, had been brought aboard a military vessel.

“The part of the tail of the Y-8 plane, which included the Flight Data Recorder and the Cockpit Voice Recorder, was successfully put on a ship in the afternoon,” the office of the army chief said in a Facebook post, alongside photos of the bright orange recording units.

“After finding that part of the plane, we are now in the process of finding out why the plane crash happened,” the statement added.

It did not say how long it might take to decipher the black box data, a process that can take days or even weeks.

There has been no official explanation for the cause of the crash.

The Chinese-made aircraft was less than two years old and had only flown some 800 hours, according to the military.

Experts say black boxes explain the causes of nearly 90 percent of plane crashes.