The Oxford Street tube station in London was evacuated and shoppers on Oxford Street, one of the city's main retail areas, was put on lockdown earlier today after reports of shots fired in the station and in numerous locations along Oxford Street, including the upscale shopping store Selfridge's. Police responded to the incident as a terror attack but now say that there is no evidence of shots having been fired. 

The Metropolitan Police said:

Police were called at 16:38hrs on Friday, 24 November to a number of reports of shots fired on Oxford Street and underground at Oxford Circus tube station.

Witness Lilly Steger told The Standard:

There were screams and then everybody started running. I thought originally it was a car driving into traffic but then we heard gunshots. Everybody ran into stores or hotels.

With no evidence of shots having been fired, the police have now stood down and the Oxford Circus station has reopened. However, some cordons remain in place and additional police will remain in the area.

With Islamic terrorism rampant across western Europe and particularly in the London area recently, people easily and understandably leap to the assumption that an act of terrorism is underway even when, say, a car backfires. That's part of the effectiveness of terrorism, and as London's Muslim mayor said recently, it's part and parcel now of life in the big city.