HUNTINGDON: UK police said they had arrested two suspects Saturday as &quot;a number of people&quot; were taken to hospital and a &quot;large-scale&quot; emergency response was mobilised after a stabbing on a train in Cambridgeshire, eastern England. &quot;We are currently responding to an incident on a train to Huntingdon where multiple people have been stabbed,&quot; British Transport Police said on X, adding that &quot;two people have been arrested.&quot; Cambridgeshire police said: &quot;A number of people have been taken to hospital.&quot; A witness described seeing a man with a large knife and told The Times newspaper there was &quot;blood everywhere&quot; as people hid in the washrooms. Some passengers were getting &quot;stamped (on) by others&quot; as they tried to run, and the witness told The Times they &quot;heard some people shouting we love (you)&quot;. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the &quot;appalling&quot; incident was &quot;deeply concerning.&quot; &quot;My thoughts are with all those affected, and my thanks go to the emergency services for their response,&quot; Starmer said in a statement on X. &quot;Anyone in the area should follow the advice of the police,&quot; Starmer added, while his interior minister, Shabana Mahmood, confirmed two people had been taken into custody. &#39;Multiple patients&#39;&nbsp;Armed police were at the scene after being alerted around 7:40 p.m. local time (1940 GMT), and the train was stopped at Huntingdon, a market town in eastern England, police said. Dozens of emergency vehicles were deployed at the station, and people were being led away in space blankets, an AFP photographer saw. Local ambulance services mobilised a &quot;large-scale response&quot; to the station, including ambulances, air ambulances, and tactical commanders. &quot;We can confirm we have transported multiple patients to hospital,&quot; the East of England Ambulance Service said on X. Train operator London North Eastern Railway (LNER) said all its railway lines had been closed while emergency services dealt with the incident at Huntingdon station. LNER, which runs trains along the east of England and Scotland, urged passengers not to travel, warning of &quot;major disruption&quot;. It serves major stops including London, Peterborough, Cambridge, York, and Edinburgh, and trains are often very busy and packed with travellers. The mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Paul Bristow, said in a post on X: &quot;Hearing reports of horrendous scenes on a train in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire&quot;, adding that his &quot;thoughts are with everyone affected.&quot; Knife crimeKnife crime in England and Wales has been steadily rising since 2011, according to official government data. While Britain has some of the strictest gun controls in the world, rampant knife crime has been branded a &quot;national crisis&quot; by Starmer. His Labour government has tried to rein in their use. Nearly 60,000 blades have been either &quot;seized or surrendered&quot; in England and Wales as part of government efforts to halve knife crime within a decade, the interior ministry said Wednesday. Carrying a knife in public can already get you up to four years in prison, and the government said knife murders had dropped by 18% in the last year. Two people were killed -- one as a result of misdirected police gunfire -- and others were wounded in a stabbing spree at a synagogue in Manchester at the start of October in an attack which shook the local Jewish community and the country.

United Kingdom

UK police arrested two suspects after multiple people were stabbed on a train in Cambridgeshire, prompting a large emergency response. Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “appalling,” as several victims were hospitalized.

UK police arrest two after 'multiple people' stabbed on train

ASCHAFFENBURG: An Afghan man accused of a deadly knife attack on a group of toddlers in Germany went on trial Thursday, nine months after an incident that inflamed a heated pre-election debate on immigration. Germany was shocked by the stabbing spree that killed a two-year-old boy and a 41-year-old man who tried to protect the children and left three others wounded in the southern city of Aschaffenburg. Five toddlers from a kindergarten class were in a public park, accompanied by two teachers, when the assailant attacked them with a kitchen knife.The suspect arrested at the scene of the January 22 attack has been only partially named, in line with usual practice by the German judiciary, as 28-year-old Enamullah O. History of mental illness&nbsp;He has a long history of mental illness and prosecutors said an expert assessment concluded his psychiatric state meant he was not criminally responsible. The public prosecutor&#39;s office has previously said there was no indication the suspect acted out of extremist or terrorist motivation, and they were seeking to have him permanently confined to a psychiatric facility. The trial is expected to stretch over several days of proceedings in October. The suspected attacker injured a two-year-old Syrian girl, one of the teachers as well as a 72-year-old man who had also tried to protect the children. He was arrested shortly afterwards and it soon emerged that the authorities had tried and failed in 2023 to deport him to Bulgaria -- the first EU country he had arrived in. In August 2024, he allegedly threatened a fellow resident at an accommodation for asylum seekers in the nearby town of Alzenau with a butcher&#39;s knife and caused her minor injuries. Political reactionsThe Aschaffenburg stabbings, which followed a string of other bloody attacks in Germany, provoked intense political reactions. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the centre-right Christian Democrats who went on to become chancellor, promised a &quot;fundamental&quot; overhaul of asylum rules and strict border controls &quot;from day one&quot; if elected. About a week later, Merz, then the opposition leader, relied on support from the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) to pass a non-binding resolution through parliament demanding stricter immigration and refugee policies. Merz&#39;s decision to rely on far-right support broke a longstanding taboo in post-World War II German politics, prompting fierce criticism and mass street protests.

Europe

The public prosecutor's office has previously said there was no indication the suspect acted out of extremist or terrorist motivation, and they were seeking to have him permanently confined to a psychiatric facility.

Articles tagged with "knife attack"

UK police arrest two after 'multiple people' stabbed on train

Afghan man on trial in Germany over deadly knife attack on toddlers