London, Thanasis Gavos

A manhunt continues in Britain for the arrest of 35-year-old Abdul Shokur Izendi, who on Wednesday night attacked a woman and her two young daughters with a chemical agent and with a brutality that has shocked public opinion in Clapham, south London.

Laboratory analyzes indicated that the substance was a “very strong concentrated corrosive liquid,” either liquid sodium dioxide or liquid sodium carbonate.

One of the neighbors who rushed to protect the 31-year-old woman and her children told the BBC that she went to help after seeing Izendi violently beating the victim’s three-year-old daughter on the road.

“It looked like the attacker wanted to break her head. I shudder when I think about what he did… I thought the youngest girl was going to die in my arms,” ​​described the woman, who accompanied the little girl to the hospital. She herself suffered a burn on her leg from the chemical.

The three-year-old girl and her eight-year-old sister have injuries from the attack and the chemical, but they are not as serious as first thought.

Their mother, however, has “life-changing” injuries and remains hospitalized under sedation.

Another eyewitness told The Times that his partner attacked the attacker, temporarily knocking him to the ground, essentially saving the little girl’s life. The woman reportedly suffered minor burns to her eyes.

Police have announced that they are offering a £20,000 reward to anyone who can provide information leading to the arrest of the perpetrator.

Photos and videos of an Izendi with a disfigured right eye from cameras in a supermarket and on the London Underground shortly after the attack have been released.

Police have received dozens of calls and searched addresses linked to Izendi in London and Newcastle, where he lives.

The perpetrator’s environment has said that he was in a relationship with the woman he attacked. He had traveled that morning from Newcastle to meet her at a hotel where she was staying with her daughters in the area of ​​the attack.

The case has also taken on political dimensions, as it was revealed that Izendi had illegally arrived in the UK from Afghanistan hidden in a truck in 2016.