Terror today in London , in the shopping area of Leicester Square , crowded with tourists, where an 11-year-old girl and a 34-year-old woman were injured in a stabbing . The attacker was arrested by the officers .
According to eyewitnesses, the woman and the child were helped by shop assistants while waiting for the arrival of paramedics who then transported them to the hospital by ambulance. The child is not in danger of life and the woman "reported minor injuries" .
According to Scotland Yard, the arrested man was a lone attacker, and therefore terrorism was not among the motivations behind the attack.
Several police officers responded to the scene of the attack and created a cordon around the stabbing site.
The incident occurred at a time when the United Kingdom is struggling to emerge from days of violence and disorder unleashed by far-right groups against migrants and the Muslim community after the massacre of little girls in Southport, near Liverpool, - attributed by police to the sudden attack of a 17-year-old armed with a knife - and the subsequent wave of misinformation and 'fake news' spread on social media about the identity of the attacker. The risk is that what happened in the British capital today could somehow fuel new tensions.
Downing Street warned this morning that the state of alert remains high across the country despite a 'de-escalation' of street clashes over the weekend.
Meanwhile, the media are reporting on a heroic shop assistant, a 29-year-old named Abdullah, who intervened at the first cries from the victims to confront the attacker and kick the knife away from him.
(Unioneonline/vl)