Prime Minister Keir Starmer took to social media to condemn the appalling incident and urged people to follow police advice
Multiple people were stabbed on a train in the UK’s Cambridgeshire, following which armed police intercepted the train and arrested two men in connection with the incident on Saturday evening, authorities said.
Cambridgeshire Constabulary said its officers are working with British Transport Police (BTP) after they intercepted the train in Huntingdon and the injured were taken to hospital. We were called at 7:39 pm (local time) with reports that multiple people had been stabbed on a train, Cambridgeshire Constabulary said in a statement.
Armed officers attended and the train was stopped at Huntingdon, where two men were arrested. A number of people have been taken to hospital, the police said.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer took to social media to condemn the appalling incident and urged people to follow police advice. “The appalling incident on a train near Huntingdon is deeply concerning, said Starmer. “My thoughts are with all those affected, and my thanks go to the emergency services for their response. Anyone in the area should follow the advice of the police, he said.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood said she was deeply saddened to hear about the stabbings in Huntingdon and urged people to avoid comment and speculation at this early stage. “Two suspects have been immediately arrested and taken into custody. I am receiving regular updates on the investigation,” she said.
A “large-scale response” has been deployed by the East of England Ambulance Service, which said numerous ambulances, tactical commanders and its Hazardous Area Response Team were rushed to the scene. Critical care teams, including the East Anglian Air Ambulance and Essex and Herts Air Ambulance, attended and confirmed transporting multiple patients to hospital.
Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said that the incident “seems to be a brutal mass attack”. “My thoughts are with all those injured or affected and the emergency services responding. The police and government should provide an update on what happened and who has been arrested as soon as possible, he said.
Roads leading into the town of Huntingdon and London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), which operates the rail network in the region, have been severely disrupted while emergency services deal with the aftermath of the stabbings. A witness who was on the train said as saying that he saw someone moving through his carriage saying: “They’ve got a knife, I’ve been stabbed. They were making their way through the carriage to get away from the suspects. They were extremely bloodied.”
A “large-scale response” has been deployed by the East of England Ambulance Service, which said numerous ambulances, tactical commanders and its Hazardous Area Response Team were rushed to the scene. Critical care teams, including the East Anglian Air Ambulance and Essex and Herts Air Ambulance, attended and confirmed transporting multiple patients to hospital.
Roads leading into the town of Huntingdon and London and North Eastern Railway (LNER), which operates the rail network in the region, have been severely disrupted while emergency services deal with the aftermath of the stabbings. A witness who was on the train was quoted by Sky News’ as saying that he saw someone moving through his carriage saying: “They’ve got a knife, I’ve been stabbed.”
“They were making their way through the carriage to get away from the suspects. They were extremely bloodied,” the man told the channel.
LNER, which runs trains along the east of England and Scotland, urged passengers not to travel, warning of “major disruption”. The mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Paul Bristow said in a post on X that he was hearing about “reports of horrendous scenes on a train in Huntingdon”. He added that his “thoughts are with everyone affected”.
Knife crime in England and Wales has been steadily rising since 2011, according to official government data. While the UK has some of the strictest gun controls in the world, rampant knife crime has been branded a “national crisis” by Starmer. His Labour government has tried to rein in their use.
Nearly 60,000 blades have been either “seized or surrendered” in England and Wales as part of government efforts to halve knife crime within a decade, the Home Office said on Wednesday. Carrying a knife in public can already get you up to four years in prison, and the government said knife murders had dropped by 18 percent in the last year.
Two people were killed – one as a result of misdirected police gunfire – and others were wounded in a stabbing spree at a synagogue in Manchester at the start of October, an attack that shook the local Jewish community and the country.
