3 STABBED, 1 DEAD IN MELBOURNE ATTACK

Suspect drove car loaded with gas cylinders

AMAN stabbed three people here yesterday, killing one, before being shot and wounded by police. Video posted to Twitter and broadcast on television showed the man swinging a knife at two police officers in the city’s crowded downtown area, while a car burned in the background.

One of the officers then shot the man and he collapsed to the ground clutching his chest, the video showed. He later died in hospital. Other footage showed two stab victims lying on the ground nearby and bleeding.

“Three people have been stabbed, unfortunately one of them is deceased at the scene,” David Clayton, police superintendent of Victoria state, said.

Clayton said police had arrived at Bourke Street, a busy shopping thoroughfare, in response to a car fire.

As flames engulfed the vehicle, the man attacked them and they shot him in the struggle, he said.

Video showed chaotic scenes as bystanders scattered.

One man charged at the tall attacker with a shopping trolley just before police drew their weapons.

A witness who gave his name as Markel told Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio: “Bystanders were yelling out ‘just shoot him, just shoot him’.”

Warning sirens sounded after the attack and police sealed off the downtown area, usually busy with shoppers and diners on a Friday evening.

The bomb squad was deployed to assess the area and television footage showed police combing the street for evidence.

The body of a victim lay under a sheet on the street.

Police later said the attacker drove a car laden with gas cylinders which caught fire and that they are treating the attack as terrorism.

“We don’t believe there is an ongoing threat at this stage, but certainly, we are treating it as a terrorism incident,” Victoria Police Commissioner Graham Ashton said.

He said the attacker was a Somali with “family associations that are well known to us”.

Ashton added that security arrangements at Remembrance Day memorials and other public events scheduled over the weekend will be reassessed and it was likely police numbers there would be boosted.

The street where the car caught fire was the scene in January last year of a fatal but not terror-related incident in which a man drove his car at pedestrians at high speed, killing six people and wounding about 30.