Three people were killed in the English city of Nottingham early Tuesday morning seemingly at random after a black-clothed man armed with a knife went on a stabbing rampage at a local bus stop, fatally stabbing a man in his 60s and two students.
A 31-year-old man has been arrested in connection with the attack. While counter-terror police have been deployed in the area following the stabbings, no motive has been officially announced by UK authorities so far, the Liverpool Echo newspaper reports.
Counter-terrorism police were also active in raiding two Nottingham properties in the wake of the stabbings, which took place in the early hours of Tuesday, with the first attack reported at 4:00 a.m. when a young man and a young woman were stabbed.
Just over an hour later, at around 5:30 a.m., a third victim, a man in his 60s, was found dead on Magdala Street. Around the same time, police were alerted to a man ramming a van into three people, who are all now hospitalized as a result.
A witness to the first attack against the two students stated the suspect was a “black guy dressed all in black with a hood and rucksack grappling with some people,” and added, “I saw him stab the lad first and then the woman. It was repeated stabbing—four or five times. The lad collapsed in the middle of the road.”
“The girl stumbled towards a house and didn’t move. The next minute she had disappeared down the side of a house, and that’s where they found her. I’d say it all happened within five or six minutes. The attacker then just walked off up Ilkeston Road towards town, as calm as anything,” the witness said.
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak commented on the attacks saying, “My thoughts are with those injured, and the family and loved ones of those who have lost their lives,” while Home Secretary Suella Braverman stated she had been in contact with Nottinghamshire police’s chief constable and was receiving updates on the case.
While UK authorities have yet to announce a possible motive, stabbing attacks and vehicles used as weapons have been commonly seen in prior Islamist terrorist attacks in the UK and elsewhere in Europe.
During the London Bridge attacks in 2017, a group of three men rammed a van into pedestrians on London Bridge and, after crashing their van, ran to the nearby Borough Market where they stabbed people at random, leaving eight people dead and 48 injured. The Islamic State terror group later took credit for the violence.
