Car collides with pedestrians at soccer parade in Liverpool, England

As thousands of people lined the streets to celebrate Liverpool Football Club’s English Premier League title win, a car collided with a number of pedestrians in the center of Liverpool, a city in northwest England, police said Monday.

Describing it as a “major incident” on X, Merseyside police said the car “stopped at the scene and a male detained.”

In separate statement, police said “the incident happened as thousands of fans lined the streets of the city to celebrate Liverpool Football Club’s Premier League title victory.

Footage of the scene showed police cordons in place around a heavily littered road and emergency vehicles in place.

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the scenes “appalling” in a post on X. “My thoughts are with all those injured or affected,” he said, adding that he was “being kept updated on developments.”

The Northwest Ambulance Service said in a statement that it was “assessing the situation and working with other members of the emergency services.”

“Our priority is to ensure people receive the medical help they need as quickly as possible,” the statement added.

An eyewitness, Natasha Rinaldi, told the British broadcaster Sky News that “people sounded desperate” and she saw the car had “run over people.” (Sky News is owned by Comcast, the parent company of NBC News.)

“Then people started rushing to go after the driver and they tried to break the car. The police did everything to block and to push people away,” Rinaldi said. “We could just hear screams and screams. We were very confused.”

“Some of my friends were down there and the car was so near them. It was a horrible scene, nobody was expecting it.”

Harry Rashid, 48, from Solihull, told Britain’s Press Association news agency that he was at the parade with his wife and two young daughters when he witnessed the collision.

“It happened about 10 feet away from us,” he said. “We were just in a crowd and we had no control over where we would be, because it was a very narrow street.”

“The vehicle came to our right. It emerged from just right next to an ambulance, which was parked up. This gray people carrier just pulled up from the right and just rammed into all the people at the side of us,” he added.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.