‘Not terrorism’: 11 injured in mass stabbing on UK train; police arrest 2

British police were investigating a mass stabbing on a London-bound train that left 11 people wounded, with two people arrested.

The attack occurred on Saturday evening on the typically busy route between the town of Doncaster, in northern England, and King’s Cross station in the capital.

The incident forced the train to stop at Huntingdon station in Cambridgeshire. Police said 10 people were hospitalized, nine of whom were “believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries.”

In a subsequent update British Transport Police Superintendent John Loveless said four of those had been discharged and one other person had arrived at the hospital, taking the number injured in the attack to 11.

Two suspects were arrested at the station, police said, adding that counter-terrorism units were assisting the investigation.

Loveless later said that the two remain in custody and confirmed that they were born in the United Kingdom. One is a 32-year-old Black British man, the other is a 35-year-old man of Caribbean descent, he said.

“There is nothing to suggest this is a terrorist incident,” Loveless said.

The police force said that “Plato,” the national code word used by police and emergency services when responding to what could be a “marauding terror attack,” was initiated. That declaration was later rescinded but no motive for the attack was disclosed.

“We’re conducting urgent enquiries to establish what has happened, and it could take some time before we are in a position to confirm anything further,” Chief Superintendent Chris Casey said. “At this early stage it would not be appropriate to speculate on the causes of the incident.”

AFP journalists saw police and forensics teams, some wearing white overalls, working through the night at the station where the train had stopped.

Witness Olly Foster told the BBC that he heard people shouting “run, run, there’s a guy literally stabbing everyone,” and initially thought it was a Halloween-related prank.

But passengers then started pushing through the carriage, Foster said, adding that his hand was left “covered in blood” that had spilled onto the chair he had been leaning on.

Foster said he saw an older man block the assailant from stabbing a younger girl, adding that the attack “felt like forever” though it lasted only minutes.

'They were stabbing everyone'

Advertisement

Olly Foster was on a train where ten people were stabbed – leaving nine with life threatening injuries – before police arrested two men when it stopped at Huntingdon in Cambridgeshire https://t.co/CvnJrhpbGb pic.twitter.com/5CnRPggQl9

— BBC Breakfast (@BBCBreakfast) November 2, 2025

Witnesses told Sky News they saw a man holding a large knife on the platform after the train halted. They then saw the man tasered and restrained by police.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer said the “appalling” incident was “deeply concerning.”

London North Eastern Railway, which operates along the route, urged customers not to travel on Sunday, saying services may be cancelled at short notice.

Knife crime ‘crisis’

Knife crime in England and Wales has increased since 2011, according to official government data.

While Britain 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 interior ministry said Wednesday.

Two people were killed — one as a result of misdirected police gunfire — and others wounded in a stabbing spree at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, at the start of October, in an attack that shook the local Jewish community and the country.

And a man appeared in a London court on Thursday charged with murder after a stabbing attack in broad daylight that left one dead and two injured.