'Oh my God it's him': Neighbours of Westminster terrorist stunned by atrocity

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Khalid Masood, 52, was shot dead by police after mowing down pedestrians in a car on Westminster Bridge and stabbing to death Pc Keith Palmer in the grounds of the Houses of Parliament.

Masood was born in Kent and was thought to be most recently living in the West Midlands.

Police have been searching a three-storey townhouse in the Winson Green area of Birmingham and neighbours said Masood lived there for around seven months until December last year.

Iwona Romek said she could not believe her eyes when she realised the man who had lived near her was the same person responsible for the attack.

She said: "I am very surprised, I cannot believe it. Because when I saw him, I couldn't even see that he could do something like this.

"Now I'm scared that someone like that was living close to me."

She added: "I see pictures of him lying injured and from that picture I can see it's him.

"And my partner as well, he has seen the picture, he is at work, and when I showed it him he said 'oh my God' it's him."

Ms Romek said she had seen him with a child, aged between five and six years old, and a partner, but that they had moved away around two to three months ago.

Armed police also raided a flat in another part of the city, storming the second-storey property on Hagley Road overnight.

Stunned residents described seeing more than a dozen black-clad officers equipped with machine guns smashing their way into the Birmingham flat, believed to be a rental, at around 11pm on Wednesday.

The Metropolitan Police have confirmed the raid was part of a wider operation in which several addresses were searched and eight arrests made.

One witness who works in a shop near the second-floor Birmingham flat said: "The man from London lived here."

He added: "They came and arrested three men."

Another resident said he recalled two men living there.

He heard one man in the flat speaking on the phone in what he described as an "Arabic or Pakistani accent", saying he had heard it "for the last two or three nights".

Masood is also thought to have lived in London, with a man of his name registered to an address in a terraced street in West Ham.

A neighbour, who asked not to be named, said: "This guy is a local guy. I've been living in the area for 20 years.

"I don't know him personally but I believe he belongs to a mosque on Leyton High Road.

"I've seen his face many times. I saw him on the news at around 7pm last night and thought 'this is the guy I know from the mosque.'

"He had a beard and big eyes."

Masood was not currently being investigated by authorities and there was "no prior intelligence about his intent to mount a terrorist attack", Scotland Yard said.

He was known to police and has a range of previous convictions for assaults, including GBH, possession of offensive weapons and public order offences dating back to 1983 - but none for terrorism offences.