A number of Victoria high school students visiting England are all safe following an attack near U.K. Parliament that left five people dead and about 40 others injured, in what authorities are calling a terrorist incident.

School officials say about 25 high school students from Spectrum Community School were touring London for a class trip.

While it was initially reported those students were still in London at the time of the attack, SD61 Supt. Piet Langstraat said they had left London for Victoria Wednesday morning and were likely mid-flight when the attacks occurred.

He said a separate group of 44 students from Reynolds High School were in Stratford, England, some 160 kilometres from London, at the time of the attacks.

That group was travelling to Oxford on Thursday and were meant to go to London later this week, but Langstraat said that will no longer be happening.

The group is expected to make alternative travel plans, but won’t be sent home early, he said.

Another group of 15 students from Victoria High School are in Europe but not near London, and will be staying, Langstraat said.

Twelve students from Reynolds are also in Spain on a different trip, and will not be changing their plans.

In Wednesday’s attack, a man plowed into pedestrians on London’s Westminster Bridge before stabbing a police officer to death while trying to storm the British Parliament.

He was then shot by police and died as a result of his injuries.

Victoria police have lowered flags to half-mast in honour of the victims of the attacks.

No terrorist groups immediately claimed responsibility for the attack, which Prime Minister Theresa May condemned as a “sick and depraved” act of terrorism.

It’s the second time in under a year a Vancouver Island school’s trip to Europe was marred by a deadly act of terrorism.

In February 2016, a group of 85 students and chaperones from the Nanaimo-Ladysmith School District were sent home early following a Bastille Day terror attack in Nice, France. The students were only metres away when a man plowed his vehicle into a celebratory crowd, killing 80 people and injuring 200 others.