Killers paraded in the street, their hands red with blood Grisly find: A police officer carries an evidence bag containing a knife near the scene of the killing. When bystanders in John Wilson Street heard a car smashing into a street sign, they turned and saw two black men apparently trying to help a white man they had run over. Instinctively, some started to head towards the scene in Woolwich, south-east London, to help, or stopped their cars to call for an ambulance. But what they were witnessing was not a road accident, but the most brutal killing imaginable - the first terrorist murder on British soil in eight years - as two al-Qaeda-inspired terrorists hacked their victim to pieces on the pavement. Police took so long to arrive that the killers casually paced up and down the street, their hands dripping with blood, making a series of pronouncements that were filmed by onlookers. "We swear by almighty Allah we will never stop fighting you," one of them said in a London accent, ITV News reported. About 2.20pm local time a soldier, aged about 20, who had been on duty in central London, was returning to the Royal Artillery Barracks, dressed in a T-shirt from the charity Help for Heroes. The car driven by the two men mounted the pavement and struck him. A witness called James said he saw two men get out of the car. We thought they were trying to help him, we thought they were involved in this crash. Then we saw two knives - a meat cleaver - they weren't small knives, they were like big kitchen knives used in a butchers. They were hacking at this poor guy ... We thought they were trying to remove organs. They were just hacking at him. Digging and digging and digging and digging. Horrendous. I jumped out the car and shouted. One of the black guys went into the crashed car, got into the front, pulled out a bag. He pointed a gun at us. He shouted, 'Get in the car. Get in the car. I got on the phone to the police, called 999. I said, 'You need armed response. You need police. These two guys are chopping this guy to pieces. Literally hacking at something. Like it's a bit of meat.' The BBC and Sky News reported that the men had shouted "Allahu akbar" - God is great - as they carried out the attack. A 42-year-old witness said: "They were trying to decapitate him for 15 minutes. There was a six-year-old boy there who saw it all. He was crying and shaking. He said he could see the body but not the head. Once they had stopped slashing at the body, the two men dragged the dead soldier onto the road, then returned to the pavement, their hands red with blood, waving their knives and a pistol. James said: "There was people filming it on their phones. The guy with the gun, the tall guy with the beanie, he was going over to the bus asking people 'take photos of me'. As if he wants to be on TV. He was proud of what he'd done to this poor guy. Local police refused to approach the killers, instead waiting 20 minutes for an armed response team. In the meantime, the terrorists calmly paced the street, waiting for police to confront them. At this point the taller of the killers, dressed in black and brandishing a knife and a meat cleaver, was filmed saying: "We swear by almighty Allah that we will never stop fighting you until you leave us alone. Your people will never be safe. The only reason we have done this is because Muslims are dying by British soldiers every day. We must fight them as they fight us. An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Some people seemed oblivious to what had occurred. As the killer made his pronouncement, a woman walked unconcernedly past him wheeling a shopping trolley. Photographs taken by witnesses showed the second killer standing talking to a woman as if casually passing time, a long knife in his hand the only sign of the violence that had just taken place. James said: "They had the opportunity to hurt other people if they wanted to. They were waiting for something. They had opportunities to run off but it turned out they were waiting for the armed police to arrive. As soon as the police come flying round the corner, the man with the beanie hat, the tall guy, he charged at the police response vehicle. Next thing you know there was six shots fired. Both men went down. Julia Wilders, 51, who lives nearby, said: "The man with two machetes ran at the police when they arrived and the police shot him. I saw him fall. The other one looked like he was going to go for his gun, so they shot him, too.