British police have named the third London Bridge attacker as 22-year-old Youssef Zaghba and said he is believed to be an Italian national of Moroccan descent.
Police said Tuesday he lived in east London and that his family has been notified, adding that he was not considered to be a “subject of interest” to either police or the intelligence services.
The other two attackers were named Monday as Khuram Shazad Butt and Rachid Redouane.
The three, who were wearing fake suicide vests, were shot dead late Saturday after ramming a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and then slashing and stabbing people in nearby Borough Market. During the attack, seven people were killed and dozens more were wounded.
The Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported Tuesday that Youssef Zaghba had been stopped in Italy while trying to go to Syria in 2016.
Zaghba, who is said to have been born in Morocco to a Moroccan father and an Italian mother, was stopped at Bologna’s Marconi airport on March 15, 2016, while he tried to take a flight to Turkey. He was allegedly on his way to Syria and was carrying only a backpack.
The report said Italy had put him on a watch list and flagged his presence to Moroccan and British authorities. The parents lived for a time in Morocco before separating when the mother returned to Italy and re-established herself in Bologna.
Zaghba was reportedly working in a London restaurant and had not been seen in Italy since 2016.
A British government official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the investigation confirmed the details of the Italian report, and said the man had not been considered a “person of interest,” meaning they had no reason to think he was violent or planning an attack.
The identity of the last attacker in Saturday’s attack came as a new search got underway in a neighborhood in east London near the home of two of the London Bridge attackers. The search in Ilford, just north of Barking, is seeking to determine whether the group had accomplices.
London police have said all 12 people held since the attack from the Barking neighborhood, have been freed.
The attack, the third in Britain in three months involving suspects who had been on the radar of British authorities, has raised questions over the government’s ability to protect Britain following cuts to police numbers in recent years. All three attacks have been claimed by the Islamic State group.
A minute’s silence was observed in Britain at 11 a.m. local time (1000 GMT) in memory of those killed during the attack.
The Associated Press contributed to this article.