LONDON – A man wielding a knife slashed a man in an east London metro station on Saturday, reportedly screaming “this is for Syria”, before police used a stun gun to subdue him in what they described as a terrorist incident.
A pool of blood near the ticket barriers at the Leytonstone underground station, about 10 kilometres east of central London, could be seen in footage posted on Twitter that also showed the suspect confronting officers at just after 19h00 GMT.
Police said initial reports indicated the man, believed to be aged 29, had also threatened other bystanders. One 56-year-old man suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries. Two other people had minor injuries, police said.
“We are treating this as a terrorist incident,” Richard Walton, who leads the Counter Terrorism Command at London’s Metropolitan Police, said in a statement.
An eyewitness quoted by and other British newspapers said the attacker appeared to claim that he was retaliating for Western attacks on Islamist militants in Syria.
Police declined to comment on those reports and it was not immediately possible to independently verify them.
The Leytonstone incident will draw parallels with the May 2013 murder of British soldier Lee Rigby, who was hacked to death just south of the Thames River by two Muslim converts.
Britain is on its second-highest alert level of “severe”, meaning a militant attack is considered highly likely, mainly because of the threat posed by Islamic State militants in Syria and Iraq who are encouraging supporters to attack the West.
After Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for the attacks on Paris last month that killed 130 people, British prime minister David Cameron won approval from lawmakers on Wednesday to bomb the Islamist group in Syria.
British warplanes first bombed oil fields controlled by Islamic State on Thursday.
– Nampa-AFP
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