As gun was fired outside a mosque in east London during Ramadan prayers on Thursday evening the police were called to reports of a “masked” man with a firearm entering the Seven Kings Masjid in Ilford at 22:45 BST.

Worshippers ushered him out of the building and a gunshot – thought to have come from a “blank-firing handgun” – was then heard.

No injuries or damage were caused, the Met said, and it did not believe it was terrorism-related.

Scotland Yard said it believed it stemmed from an earlier incident in a street close to the mosque off High Road.

‘Acting suspicious’

Worshipper Ibraheem Hussain, 19, described hearing the gunshot about half an hour after prayers began.

“We were upstairs in the classrooms and about 30 minutes into the night prayer a large noise went off”, he said.

“It sounded like a firework or maybe something heavy had been dropped, so no-one really thought anything of it.

“But then someone said it was a gunshot and that someone had come into the mosque and he had a firearm on him.

“The managers had seen him. He was masked and acting suspicious.”