UK calls stabbing incident terrorism with six casualties

A stabbing rampage in the southern English town of Reading in which three people were killed and three others taken to hospital was an act of terrorism, police said on Sunday, calling the attack in a sunny park an atrocity.

Detectives said a man had run into a park in Reading, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of London where locals had been enjoying the evening sun on Saturday, and attacked people with a knife before being tackled by unarmed officers five minutes after they were alerted.

Police said an unnamed 25-year-old man who had initially been detained on suspicion of murder had since been rearrested under the Terrorism Act. He remains in police custody.

"The investigation continues to move at a fast pace," said Detective Chief Superintendent Kath Barnes, head of the regional counter-terrorism unit.

A Western security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Reuters that the arrested man was a Libyan called Khairi Saadallah.

The security source said that Saadallah had come across the radar of Britain's domestic security agency MI5 in 2019 over intelligence he had aspirations to travel for extremist purposes, although his plans came to nothing. It said that he never met the criteria for a full investigation.

Initially police had said the attack did not appear to be terrorism. But Britain's most senior counter-terrorism police officer, Neil Basu, said officers had worked through the night and had now declared it to be a terrorist incident.

While the motivation for the attack was unclear, he said there was no intelligence that other crowded places were at risk.

The victims have not yet been formally identified but a school in a nearby town said one of its teachers, James Furlong, had been killed.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was "appalled and sickened" by the attack and said Britain would change the law if needed to prevent any future incidents.

Reuters