Fresh acid attack reported on a UK citizen
Authorities have reported a fresh attack involving corrosive substance in the United Kingdom, the second such incident in a matter of days and another sign that violent crimes are rapidly surging in the country.
Police in West Midlands, in western-central England, appealed for any information related to the acid attack earlier on Tuesday on a woman in Ladywood, Birmingham.
The attack came around 10 a.m local time and the woman was targeted from a passing moped or bicycle, police said.
“Police are investigating an attack in which a corrosive substance was thrown at a woman in Ladywood, Birmingham, just after 10am this morning,” it said in a statement.
The 47-year-old woman was taken to the hospital, reports said, adding that she had suffered injuries to her face.
The woman is the latest victim of acid attack in Britain, a country that can now be amply called a heaven for acid throwers. Attacks involving corrosive substances have doubled in metropolitan areas like the capital London over the past years, prompting the government to earmark separate funding to tackle the issue.
The attack in Birmingham came just three days after a three-year-old boy was wounded by acid in Worcester, another city in West Midlands. Police have made five arrests over the case while motives of the attackers remain to be known. The attack on the toddler sparked huge shocks across Britain as the public becomes more and more sensitive to reports that indicate violent crimes are on the rise.
A report released Thursday by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said Britain recorded a 12-percent increase in the number of homicides while knife crime offenses rose by 16 percent in the year leading to March. The report said that the number of robberies recorded in that period also soared by as much as 30 percent, vehicle-related theft was up by 17 percent and gun-related crimes increased by two percent.
Many blame the surge in violent crimes to the government’s poor funding of police. Although statistics by the Home Office suggest that the overall number of police workforce has increased over the past year, but the actual number of police officers in England and Wales has decreased to 122,404, a record low since 1996 when authorities began to record the data.
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