World News
Emergency services are working at the scene in Southport, England, where a man has been arrested and a knife has been seized after a number of people were injured in a stabbing, Monday 29 July 2024. James Speakman/PA via AP
LONDON (AP) — A knife-wielding teenager attacked a children’s dance and yoga class in northwest England on Monday, killing two children and wounding 11 others in a “ferocious” stabbing attack that sent bloodied children running into the street to escape the horror, police and witnesses said.
A 17-year-old boy has been arrested on suspicion of murder and attempted murder in the attack in Southport, a coastal town near Liverpool, Merseyside Police said. The motive was unclear, but police said investigators were not treating the attack as terrorism-related.
Nine children were injured, six of them in critical condition. Two injured adults who were trying to protect them were also in critical condition, police said.
“We believe the injured adults were bravely trying to protect the children who were being attacked,” Police Chief Serena Kennedy said.
The Taylor Swift-themed workshop took place during the first week of the school holidays for children aged six to 11. An advert for the two-hour session promised yoga, dancing and bracelet-making.
Witnesses described hearing bloodcurdling screams and seeing children covered in blood.
“They were on the road, running away from the daycare,” said Bare Varathan, a nearby shop owner. “They had been stabbed, here, here, here, everywhere,” indicating the neck, back and chest.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the knife attack as “horrific and deeply shocking”.
Merseyside Police said officers were called around midday to an address in Southport, a coastal town of about 100,000 people near Liverpool. They described the incident as a “major incident” but said there was no wider threat to the public.
“When they arrived they were shocked to find that several people, including many children, had been victims of a vicious attack and had suffered serious injuries,” Mr Kennedy said.
Colin Parry, a body shop owner, said most of the stabbing victims appeared to be young girls.
“Mothers come here now and scream,” Parry said. “It’s like a scene from a horror movie.”[…]It feels like an American movie, not sunny Southport.”
The suspect, whose identity has not been released, lived in a village about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the scene of the attack, police said. He was originally from Cardiff, Wales.
Ryan Carney, who lives with his mother on the street, said his mother saw emergency workers carrying children “covered in red, covered in blood. She said she could see the stab wounds in the children’s backs.”
“All that stuff never really happens here,” he said. “You hear about it, stabbings and stuff like that in the big cities, Manchester or London. This is sunny Southport. That’s what people call it. The sun shines. It’s a nice place to live.”
Britain’s worst attack on children occurred in 1996, when Thomas Hamilton, 43, shot dead 16 nursery school pupils and their teacher in a school gym in Dunblane, Scotland. The UK subsequently banned the private ownership of almost all handguns.
Mass shootings and murders with firearms are rare in Britain, where knives were used in around 40% of homicides in the year to March 2023. Several headline-grabbing attacks and a recent rise in knife crime have fuelled concerns and led to calls for the government to do more to crack down on bladed weapons.
