British Prime Minister Theresa May has condemned the "evil" ideology behind recent terror attacks.
It was the third terrorist outrage to hit Britain this year following the Westminster and Manchester attacks.
In a statement outside 10 Downing Street, Mrs May said that although there was no direct link between the three incidents, "terrorism breeds terrorism".
Many of the 48 people injured in London attack have "life-threatening" injuries.
Seven people were killed when three men drove a van at pedestrians on London Bridge shortly after 10pm last night, before stabbing a number of people in nearby Borough Market.
They were shot dead by armed police officers within eight minutes of emergency calls being made.
Mrs May urged everyone go about their lives as normal and said the general election would go ahead on Thursday.
"Violence can never be allowed to disrupt the democratic process, so those campaigns will resume in full tomorrow and the general election will go ahead as planned on Thursday," she said.
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London Bridge is a major transport hub and nearby Borough Market is a fashionable warren of alleyways packed with bars and restaurants that is always bustling on a Saturday night.
Mrs May said there needed to be an international agreement to "regulate cyberspace" where extremists have "safe spaces".
Theresa May says recent attacks connected by 'evil ideology that is a perversion of Islam and a perversion of the truth' pic.twitter.com/NKshCIlBCM
— RTÉ News (@rtenews) June 4, 2017
She said the recent attacks on the UK are not connected, "but we believe we are experiencing a new trend in the threat we face".
"As terrorism breeds terrorism and perpetrators are inspired to attack, not only on the basis of carefully constructed plots after years of planning and training, and not even as lone attackers radicalised online, but by copying one another and often using the crudest of means of attack," she said.
Mrs May also paid tribute to the response of the emergency services and to members of the public who went to the aid of those caught up in the attack.
She added: "On behalf of the people of London and on behalf of the whole country, I want to thank and pay tribute to the professionalism and bravery of the police and the emergency services, and the courage of members of the public who defended themselves and others from the attackers.
"And our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and with their friends, families and loved ones."
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She listed four areas where she said change needed to take place.
The first was the fight against the "evil ideology" inspiring the repeated attacks, which she called a perversion of Islam and of the truth.
The fight could not be won through military intervention alone, she said, adding that there was a need to defend pluralistic British values that were superior to anything offered by the "preachers of hate".
Secondly, Mrs May said, new regulations were needed to reduce the space available to extremists online.
"We cannot allow this ideology the safe space it needs to breed. Yet that is precisely what the internet and the big companies that provide internet-based services provide," she said. "We need to work with allied democratic governments to reach international agreements that regulate cyberspace."
Thirdly, she said, more needed to be done to identify and stamp out extremism across British society.
The fourth area was the counter-terrorism strategy, which Mrs May said was robust but needed to be reviewed in light of the changing threat.
She said that if an increase in jail sentences for terrorism-related offences, even apparently minor ones, were needed, then it would be done.
