LONDON: Police in the United Kingdom have arrested a man after an 11-year-old girl and a 34-year-old woman were stabbed in London’s Leicester Square.
According to the police the incident occurred on Monday in the central London square, a popular tourist destination, was not being treated as “terror-related”.
The square where the attack took place and the surrounding area has an estimated 2.5 million visitors every week and are home to shops, restaurants, cinemas and theatres.
The police said the wounds of the 11-year-old victim were not life-threatening adding that she was being treated in hospital. There were no other suspects in the case, police said.
British media quoted a security guard as saying he “jumped on” the attacker and took the knife from him.
The 29-year-old guard, Abdullah, said: “I heard a scream. At that moment, I saw there was one person, roughly [in his] mid-30s or early 30s, and he was like stabbing a kid. I jumped on him, held the hand in which he was [carrying] a knife and just put him down on the floor and just held him and took the knife away from him.
“Then a couple of more people joined as well, and we just held him until the police came. It took maybe three to four minutes for the police to arrive, and then they just took him into custody.”
The police forces in the UK are on high alert after the recent riots. It was not immediately clear whether the latest stabbing had any connection to the unrest.
Police had braced for more riots over the weekend, but no widespread unrest took place. Ministers remained on high alert, while Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s office said, the government’s work was not done in dealing with the fallout from the violence.
