Ten people are in hospital with nine believed to have life-threatening injuries – after a stabbing attack on board a Doncaster-London King’s Cross train.
Two people have been arrested after the train made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon station for police to intervene.
British Transport Police say counter-terrorism officers are supporting the investigation as they “work to establish the full circumstances and motivation”.
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10 people are in hospital, nine with life-threatening injuries after a mass stabbing on a train in Cambridge on Saturday evening. Police have declared a major incident and say two men have been arrested. Counterterror officers are helping police in the investigation. The incident took place on the 1825 LNER service from Doncaster to London’s King’s Cross. After passengers alerted staff to an incident on board, the train made an unscheduled stop at Huntington station around 20 miles from Peterbr where it was met by the emergency services. Now, this was part of that immediate response by the emergency services which included armed police officers and a fleet of ambulances. Passengers on board the train have reported people shouting that a man had a knife and that multiple people were bleeding. One eyewitness said a man holding a large knife was seen on the train platform with armed police pointing their weapons at him. Another said the man was then tasered and restrained that has not yet been confirmed by the authorities. The prime minister Sakir star issued a statement calling it a deeply concerning and appalling incident. British transport police described it as shocking. At the moment, we don’t know the identities of the 10 people injured, the details of the two people who were arrested or the motive for the attack. LNER has said some lines are still closed and customers are asked not to travel today. Disruption is expected until the end of the day. We’ll be live at Huntington Railway Station shortly, but first, let’s hear from Ollie Foster. He was traveling on the train at the time of the attack, just one carriage from where the stabbing took place. He spoke to my colleague Clare Richardson and began by explaining how he found out something wasn’t right. Yeah. So, I was in Coach H. Um I was literally just listening to audible on my phone and then I had guys suddenly run past going run. There’s a guy stabbing literally everyone everything. At first, um, there was a few of us kind of looking at each other like thinking, was it a joke? Like, it’s Halloween, are they pranking? Um, but then you could kind of see in their faces they were being serious. So, I kind of got my stuff and I was running. Um, and everyone was really pushing behind us, really panicking. Um, and at this point, I was kind of asking questions like, “What’s what’s going on? Um, what’s happening? Like, who is it?” And they were like, “A guy’s just stabbing everyone back there.” Um, and then I put my hand on this chair. Um, like just trying to push push myself forward. And then I look at my hand and it’s covered in blood. And then I look at the chair and there’s blood all over the chair. And then I look ahead and there’s blood all on the chairs. And I’m thinking, okay, this is this is pretty serious. Um, so some of the guys that had run through to kind of alert us to run, they they were the ones who had also been stabbed. Um, so we’re running over and getting to the edge of the carriage. Still trying to work out who is it, you know, what’s their intentions, what’s their motives. Um, and to be honest, to this point, I don’t really know their motives or their intentions. Um, I just knew they were stabbing everyone. and someone kind of said they they thought they had a gun. Um so we ran to the end of the carriage kind of we pulled the uh the emergency alarm and just trying to work out can we barricade the doors? Can we lock the doors? Um but we couldn’t really and then by the time I got to the end of the carriage I realized I was actually at the back of it and there was about six of us. There was a girl, bless her, who was really really um in a bit of state because the guy had actually tried to stab her and one of the older guys was an absolute hero blocked it with his head and he’s got this like gash. He had his gash on his head. Um he’s got his he’s got I think a gash in his neck and he’s kind of getting we’re kind of giving him like jackets to keep the blood keep the pressure on the blood. Um and while we’re doing that kind of there’s a there’s a person that I know and he’s kind of looked at me and gone like um have you got anything we can use in case he comes through and uh he did we had a Jack Daniels bottle between us and that was it. So we’re kind of sitting there with one Jack Daniels bottle just looking down the end of this carriage just praying somebody doesn’t walk down with a knife with a gun. We we didn’t really know what was going on. Um and then it felt like literally forever, but eventually the train kind of stopped. Um and I thought it was actually in the middle of nowhere and then I thought it was Stevenage, but it ended up being Huntington. Everyone’s kind of running off and then I get off the train and um I’m thinking, okay, they’re coming off from the far end of the train, which my right hand side. So I thought uh that he might be there still. So I’m looking to my right and I just see 20 people and about around 20 people in pure panic. There’s three people severely bleeding. Um, and one guy is holding his stomach and there’s blood coming down his stomach down his leg and he’s just going help of being stabbed. So, I’ve seen two people trying to kind of trying to help him. There’s a few of us in a group that are running away and we all we all get out. By the time we come, we kind of completely get out um out of the train station. We run from the train station past the traffic lights and we kind of sticking together but watching it unfold. And to be fair, pretty quickly the police have come. There’s about eight police cars going straight in. Um, and I didn’t actually see what happened with the guy. I think Yeah. Yeah. I think he was arrested. Apparently there was two. I only knew of one at the time. Um, but yeah, it was it was a place where these attacks. I’m sorry to jump in. This sounds like it was absolutely terrifying to be on a moving train while all this is happening. Did you catch a glimpse of the attacker? We I I didn’t. There was Well, there was I didn’t look back. Two people that I was with did. Um, and they believe that he was a black man in his mid20ies. Um, and that was all that they saw. They didn’t know. I asked if they were speaking English. Didn’t know if you’re speaking, what language you’re speaking was English or what his motivations were. It was just that they got on at peace and that unfolded. Okay. So, that that’s what you you were able to hear from people in the chaos of that moment. I understand you wanted to get off that train and as far away from it as quickly as you could. How long would you say it took before you saw emergency vehicles start to turn up on the platform? To be fair, as soon as we we ran out the platform, ran out the station and as soon as we were running out the station, we saw blue lights. So, they were they were there very quick. And and just in terms of the timeline, how it must be hard to judge when you’re in this moment of panic, but is it clear how long it was before you first heard people coming to you warning that there was danger on that train until it actually pulled into the station and you were able to disembark? I want to say about 10 or 15 minutes. It felt like forever to be honest. I think it was about 10 minutes. Those must have felt like the longest 10 minutes of your life. Um, I’m so sorry this has happened to you. Is it also possible to say how many people you saw either on the train or on the platform after you got off um who looked like they had been seriously injured. I saw I mean there was I think there was about two guys in front of me. There was the old uh there was the older guy behind us. That’s three. Getting off the train. There was another three and then there was a few more people that I saw that I didn’t see kind of getting treated outside. So, um I think yeah, it was around 10. And and just talk me through the the moment as it was pulling into the station because you mentioned people were really panicking. Was this a crowded train? Was it Did you have the sense that people were pushing to to get off? It actually wasn’t crowded at first. There was a few spare seats, a few few spare seats. But when we were at the end of the train, it was like the people behind us, the there was a few people just pushing in pure panic, just trying to get it moving, but there was nowhere to go. So, there was probably like at our end of the carriage probably about 20 people all queued up like pushing as far as they could, but obviously there was nowhere else to go. Um, I think I want to say there was probably about 40 50 people on the train. And what happened to you after you were able to disembark? Were you were you greeted by emergency services? just just tell us where you are now and what the rest of your evening has looked like. Yeah, so we were kind of um everyone was on the train. The the police kind of asked us to say there kind of take eyewitnesses. Um they had they had they gave us a team seemed like there was a team to kind of take um accounts from everyone and there was a team obviously dealing with it. They they were there in numbers. They all rushed over there. So there was I think to be fair they were really really good. Um they kept us there, took our accounts, and then they asked people after about an hour of being there um kind of did you what did you see? And if you weren’t like a key eyewitness, they were like, “Yeah, we’re happy for you to go.” If you were a key witness, you saw what anything that unfolded. I think they want to take more details. Um a lot of our stuff, I think I ditched my bag when I was when I was running. It was getting caught on the handle, so I just left it. Um a lot of those were kind of left on the train and I think they’ll get back to us at some point, but obviously they got checked forics and stuff. Um, so yeah, and now I I ended up uh getting a lift from like my parents back