Blast outside Liverpool's hospital declared "terrorist incident"

British police say an explosion of a taxi outside a hospital in Liverpool on Sunday is a “terrorist incident,” while motives remain unclear.

“Enquiries will now continue to seek to understand how the device was built, the motivation for the incident and to understand if anyone else was involved in it,” said Russ Jackson, the head of Counterterrorism Policing in northwest England.

The British official said the blast on Sunday at Liverpool Women’s Hospital involved an improvised explosive device “built by the passenger” who died.

The occupant of the taxi was killed and its driver injured when the vehicle burst into flames outside the Liverpool Women’s Hospital on Sunday morning.

Liverpool Mayor Joanne Anderson said the taxi driver locked the doors of his cab so the passenger couldn’t leave.

“The taxi driver, in his heroic efforts, has managed to divert what could have been an absolutely awful disaster at the hospital,” she told the BBC.

The cabbie, whose name has not been released, is being treated in hospital for non-life-threatening injuries.

Counterterrorism police officers are leading the investigation.

Three men in their 20s were arrested Sunday at an address in the northwest England city under the Terrorism Act and remain in custody.

Suspicions have been aroused due to the timing of the explosion, just before 11 a.m. on Remembrance Sunday, the moment people across Britain hold services in memory of those killed in wars.

Britain’s interior minister, Home Secretary Priti Patel, said she was “being kept regularly updated on the awful incident.”