One dead, five critical after London knife attacks

LONDON - A knife-wielding man killed one person and critically injured five others in a series of apparently random morning rush-hour stabbings across north London just days before Christmas, police said.

A man with a history of mental illness was arrested in connection with the attacks. Police said a knife had been found.

Knife crime is rising sharply across Britain, prompting the government to consider new laws raising the minimum age of knife ownership and extending the range of banned weapons.

Last year 272 people were knifed to death in Britain, an increase of 35 per cent in five years, while at the same time 80 people were shot dead.

In some parts of London the problem is so bad that schools have introduced metal scanners to root out hidden knives.

Police said the suspect, described as about 30 years old and of Turkish origin, had driven in a car to at least five different locations to stage the attacks.

"We could be dealing with a person who has mental illness, certainly the person in custody has a history of mental illness," Chief Superintendent Simon O'Brien said.

"It seems the suspect was getting out of his vehicle, picking people at random, stabbing them and then getting back in his vehicle. We don't know the motivation for the attacks at this stage," he said.

"There appears to be no link between the victims. They were also a cross-section in terms of ethnicity."

On Thursday night surgeons at the London heart hospital were fighting to save the life of a 20-year-old woman, while four other male victims were in stable condition.

A spokesman for London's Metropolitan Police said though such attacks were not unheard off, the fact that the attacker appeared to be driving around and selecting his victims at random did make it unique.

"I don't recall anything like that before in London," he said.

Thursday morning's attack was the second fatal stabbing in two days in north London.

On Wednesday a shop keeper was knifed to death in Wood Green after he chased two thieves who stole two bottles of spirits from his shop.

- REUTERS