Suspected jihadi held over UK knife spree

BRITISH anti-terror police were yesterday questioning a suspected jihadist over the attempted murder of three people in a frenzied New Year’s Eve knife attack.

A 25-year-old man armed with two knives was wrestled to the ground by police after the attack at Manchester’s Victoria rail station

The suspect could be heard screaming ‘Long live the Caliphate’ – a reference to Isis’s enclave in the Middle East – and ‘Allahu Akbar’, or ‘God is greatest’, as he was led away to a police van.

The attack came after foreign jihadists urged Islamist extremists in Britain to bring ‘horror and misery’ over the festive season. Officers yesterday raided a house 2km from the scene of the rampage. Neighbours said it was home to a Somali family with four sons and a daughter.

A witness to the attack said the knifeman had earlier shouted: ‘As long as you keep bombing other countries, this sort of s*** is going to keep happening.’

A man in his 50s suffered multiple injuries while his partner, also in her 50s, had a serious head wound. A police sergeant in his 30s was knifed in the shoulder as officers swooped on the attacker, but was discharged from hospital afterwards. None of the injuries was life-threatening.

The attack took place just a few hundred yards from Manchester Arena, where suicide bomber Salman Abedi killed 22 at an Ariana Grande concert in 2017.

The stabbings on the Metrolink tram platform at the station were witnessed by BBC producer Sam Clack. He told how he saw a man ‘all dressed in black’ beside a couple with the woman ‘screaming in a blood-curdling way’.

Mr Clack added: ‘He came towards me. I looked down and saw he had a kitchen knife with a black handle with a 12-inch blade. It was just fear, pure fear.’ He said police used a taser and pepper spray before ‘six or seven’ officers jumped on the man and held him down.

Passengers rushed to the aid of the victims. Police sources said the suspect refused to give officers his identity after being arrested for attempted murder.

Assistant chief constable Russ Jackson, of Greater Manchester Police, said he believed the attacker had acted alone and detectives were ‘keeping an open mind’ over his motivation. Chief constable Ian Hopkins insisted the fact ‘that the incident happened so close to the scene of the terrorist attack on May 22, 2017, makes it even more dreadful’.