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man, known only as James, said he and his partner saw two black men attack a young man aged around 20 in a Help for Heroes T-shirt in Woolwich, south-east London, like he was ‘a piece of meat’.

Fighting back tears, he told LBC Radio: ‘They were hacking at this poor guy, literally. They were chopping him, cutting him. These two guys were crazed. They were just animals.

‘They dragged him from the pavement, dumped his body in the middle of the road and left (it) there.’

He said that after the ‘horrendous’ attack, the two men, in their 20s, stood around, waving knives and a gun, even asking people nearby to take pictures of them ‘as if they wanted to be on TV’.

‘They were oblivious to anything, they were more worried about having their photo taken, running up and down the road,’ he said. ‘They had no intention of running off or leaving or anything.

‘In my opinion, they were waiting for the police to arrive to be shot by the police. That’s the only thing I can think. It’s horrendous what they were doing to that guy.’

Some ‘brave’ women tried to shield the man on the ground from them, he added. The witness also said that it was 20 minutes before armed police arrived at the scene.

‘When the armed police came flying around the corner, the man with the beanie hat, the tall guy, he charged at the police vehicle,’ he said. ‘A shot was fired by the other guy with the gun.’

The comments by the witness came after the man was killed and two others were taken to hospital with gunshot wounds today following a ‘serious incident’ understood to involve a serving soldier.

Some witnesses described seeing a ‘beheading’ while another described seeing a man wearing a Help for Heroes T-shirt being attacked with a machete-style knife and dumped in a street.

Woolwich and Greenwich MP Nick Raynsford said it was his understanding that one person, a serving soldier, was dead and his two alleged killers were taken to hospital.

London Ambulance Service confirmed a man was found dead at the scene, while two other men were taken to hospital, one of them in a serious condition.

London Air Ambulance confirmed that one patient was airlifted from the scene, while another was taken away by road ambulance.

Cheryl Spruce, who lives near the incident, told Sky News that a nearby school was put into ‘lockdown’. She said: ‘The police were telling us to take an alternative route to get to school.

‘There were police everywhere. There were 30 to 40 police officers. Police officers in each road were stopping people from walking anywhere. It’s mayhem out there at the moment.’

John Wilson Street was shut in both directions between Artillery Place and New Ferry Approach, Pictures showing three men lying on the ground appeared on Twitter shortly after the incident.

The Ministry of Defence was urgently looking at the reports that the incident involved a soldier but had no further comment. The incident occurred some 200 yards from the Royal Artillery Barracks.

The barracks, also known as the Woolwich station, now houses a number of the King’s Troop Royal Horse Artillery and independent companies of the Grenadier and Coldstream Guards.

Woolwich Common remains a designated military training area. The shooting events at the 2012 Summer Olympics and Paralympics were held at a temporary venue at the Barracks. – Daily Mail.