A knife-wielding man hijacked a bus in Norway and stabbed to death three people on board.

The suspect, a man in his 50s, was arrested after the attack in Sogn and Fjordane county.

Police said the suspect, who last night was being treated for stab wounds, was not an ethnic Norwegian but could not provide further details.

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The victims were two men in their 50s — the Norwegian bus driver and a Swedish passenger — and a 19-year-old Norwegian woman, Erdal said. All had been stabbed. There were no other passengers on the bus, she said.

The attack took place around 16:30 GMT on a remote mountain road near Ardal, about 135 miles north-west of Oslo.

“The situation was very unclear. They only told us that there was one man on the bus who had hijacked the bus and the driver was hurt. That was the first message we got here,” said Andre Krakene, a spokesman for Oslo police.

"For now, I have no information to indicate there was anyone else than the three victims" on the bus, police officer Joern Lasse Foerde Refsnes told TV2 news channel.

"It was impossible to open the doors. Then we saw a dark-skinned person inside the bus. At first, we thought he was trying to get out but then saw he was moving around with a knife, and we realised that the situation was quite different.”

Police said there was nothing to suggest the victims were known to the attacker. Authorities in Oslo were getting ready to send an anti-terror unit to the scene but called off the deployment after receiving reports that the suspect had been arrested.

Multiple killings are rare in Norway, though the country was shocked by its worst peacetime massacre two years ago when Anders Behring Breivik, a Norwegian right-wing extremist, killed 77 people in a bomb and gun rampage.

AP