One Briton injured in incident that killed two Finns and injured several others

This article is more than 3 years old

This article is more than 3 years old

An 18-year-old Moroccan man suspected of carrying out Friday’s deadly knife attack in Finland appeared to have targeted women as his victims, police have said.

Officers are treating the attack in Turku, in which two people were killed and eight injured, as a terrorist act.



The two people killed were Finnish, while a British man, two Swedes and one Italian were among those injured.

Four of the wounded were still being treated in hospital – three in intensive care – while the rest of those injured were expected to be discharged on Saturday.



The Briton is believed to have sustained minor injuries. A Foreign and Commonwealth Office spokeswoman said: “Our staff have offered support to a British man following an incident in Finland.”

The suspect arrived in Finland in 2016 and had been “part of the asylum process”, police said.

Officers arrested five people – four of whom were Moroccan – in a Turku apartment on Friday night as part of their investigation.

“There was a raid and we have now six suspects in custody, the main suspect and five others,” said Det Supt Markus Laine of the national bureau of investigation.

Play Video 0:31 Turku emergency services attend knife attack scene – video

“We are investigating the role of these five other people but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with [the attack] … We will interrogate them, after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect,” he said.

An international warrant has been issued for another suspect.

The 18-year-old was arrested after being shot in the thigh following the attack in a market square. He remains in intensive care.

Laura Laine, who was sitting in a cafe during one of the attacks, said: “First thing we heard was a young woman screaming like crazy. I thought, it’s just kids having fun ... but then people started to move around and I saw a man with a knife in his hand, stabbing a woman.

“Then a person ran towards us shouting ‘he has a knife’, and everybody from the terrace ran inside. Next, a woman came in to the cafe. She was crying hysterically, down on her knees, saying ‘someone’s neck has been slashed open’.”

The centre of Turku was cordoned off after the attack, which took place just after 4pm local time, although the area was reopened several hours later. The city is a former capital of Finland and remains a business and cultural hub.

Finland raised its emergency readiness across the country after the stabbing, increasing security at airports and train stations and putting more officers on the streets.

In June, Finland’s intelligence and security agency Supo raised the country’s terror threat level from “low” to “elevated”, the second of four levels, owing to the increased risk of an attack committed by Islamic State.

On Saturday morning a man who stabbed eight people in a knife attack in the Siberian city of Surgut was shot dead by Russian police. Officers said the man attacked passersby in the street. Two of his victims were in serious condition in hospital.