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British police have said that there is “nothing to suggest” the mass stabbing of passengers on a train in eastern England was a terrorist incident, adding that the two suspects under arrest are both British nationals.
Superintendent John Loveless said that of the nine people believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries in Saturday evening’s attack, four had since been discharged while two were still in a life-threatening condition.
He said the British Transport Police investigation was still seeking “to establish the full circumstances and motivation” for the attack.
“At this early stage it would not be appropriate to speculate on the causes of the incident,” he added.
Loveless said that, while Counter Terrorism Policing had initially supported the Transport Police investigation, “at this stage there is nothing to suggest this is a terrorist incident”.
He added that a 32-year-old Black British male and a 35-year-old British man of Caribbean descent, both of whom had been born in the UK, were in police custody. The transport police said both men were “arrested on suspicion of attempted murder”.
Overall, 10 people were taken to hospital by ambulance after the attack, while one further person went on their own.
“We now know this attack is not being treated as terrorism, and that two British-born, British nationals have been arrested,” home secretary Shabana Mahmood posted on X. “The investigation is ongoing, and I am receiving regular updates from the police.”
The two men have not been named, as is common in the UK before being charged with an offence.
Police can normally hold a suspect for up to 24 hours without charge, but this can be extended up to 36 hours for serious offences and up to 96 hours with the permission of a magistrate.
Earlier on Sunday Reform UK leader Nigel Farage — who has campaigned to make it obligatory for police forces to identify the ethnicity of people arrested and charged — had called for information on the suspects to be released “as soon as possible”.
Pressure has increased on police to reveal suspects’ nationalities following the murder of three school-age girls in Southport in July 2024 — an attack that led to riots after online misinformation wrongly suggested it had been carried out by an asylum seeker.
Before Sunday’s police statement, defence secretary John Healey said he “would expect” the police to release information on the suspects.
Speaking on Sky News on Sunday Healey added that the attack “reflects a period of really increasing pressure on our country and uncertainty more widely in the world — a new era of threat if you like”.
The transport police said there had been no fatalities in the attack, which occurred on the 6.25pm train from Doncaster to London King’s Cross. Video posted online showed armed police rushing towards the train after it stopped at Huntingdon, about 60 miles north of London.
The force said it had been called at 7.42pm to reports of a “multiple stabbing”. It added that armed police from the Cambridgeshire force had boarded the train within eight minutes of the first call and arrested the two suspects.
Saturday’s attack was the second mass stabbing in the UK within a week. A 49-year-old man was killed and a 45-year-old man and a 14-year-old boy were injured on Monday in a knife attack in Uxbridge, north-west London. The man arrested for the attack, Safi Dawood, is a refugee from Afghanistan who arrived in the UK in 2020.
It also came just under a month after Jihad al-Shamie, a Syrian-born British citizen, launched a car and knife attack on a synagogue in Manchester during Yom Kippur services. The attack ended in the deaths of two worshippers and the shooting dead of al-Shamie by police.
The transport police said there would be a “high visibility presence of police officers” on trains and at stations on Sunday to “reassure the public and respond to any concerns”.
Government officials said this surge in police on the rail network would last at least several days. As well as a visible presence on LNER routes it will also focus on major terminals including London, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Manchester.
London North Eastern Railway issued a “do not travel” notice shortly before 6am on Sunday, warning that some services would be delayed or cancelled. LNER said on Sunday afternoon that they “expect to run a normal service” on Monday.