Knife attacker kills man in london

A knife attacker slashed a
man at an east London metro station, reportedly
screaming "This is for Syria!", in what police
described as a terrorist incident, prompting a
senior minister to urge Britons on Sunday not to
be intimidated.
A pool of blood near the ticket barriers at the
Leytonstone Underground station, about six miles
(10 km) east of central London, could be seen in
footage posted on Twitter that also showed the
suspect confronting police on Saturday evening.
Police said the man, believed to be aged 29, had
also threatened other bystanders. One man,
thought to be 56 years old, suffered serious but
not life-threatening injuries and was in a stable
condition at a London hospital. A second victim
suffered minor injuries.
"I am treating this as a terrorist incident," Richard
Walton, who leads the Counter Terrorism
Command at London's Metropolitan Police, said
in a statement. The man was arrested after
police used a Taser to subdue him.
Detectives were searching a residential address in
east London and additional officers were being
deployed to the rail transport network, police
said.
An eyewitness quoted by the Guardian and other
British newspapers said the attacker appeared to
claim that he was retaliating for Western air
strikes on Islamist militants in Syria, shouting:
"This is what happens when you f*** with mother
Syria, all of your blood will be spilled!"
Police declined to comment on those reports and
it was not immediately possible to verify them
independently.
British war planes joined the strikes for the first
time on Thursday, a few hours after Prime
Minister David Cameron won parliamentary
approval to bomb the Islamic State militant group
in Syria after it claimed responsibility for attacks
on Paris last month that killed 130 people.
In an interview with the Sunday Times, Syrian
President Bashar al-Assad mocked Cameron's
strategy, saying it would make the situation
worse, not better.
THREAT TO BRITAIN
Britain is on its second-highest security alert level
of "severe", meaning a militant attack is
considered highly likely, though not imminent,
mainly because of the threat posed by Islamic
State militants in Syria and Iraq.
Secretary of State for Work and Pensions Iain
Duncan Smith said that, whatever the
circumstances, Britons must not let the
Leytonstone incident affect their behaviour.
"We cannot let these sort of people, terrorists et
cetera, actually dominate our space," he told the
BBC. "The way we defeat them at the end of the
day is with our values, our freedom of expression,
our freedom of belief ... our ability to take our
children, our families out at Christmas. None of
that must be curtailed."
Nevertheless, the attack will draw parallels with
the May 2013 murder of British army soldier Lee
Rigby, who was hacked to death in east London
by two Muslim converts.
Cameron has said air strikes will not increase the
chance of an attack on Britain, since militants
already view it as a top target, with seven plots
foiled over the past year.
Britain's worst Islamist militant attack was in
July 2005, when 52 people were killed by suicide
bombs on underground trains and a bus.
Islamic State said on Saturday that the married
couple who killed 14 people in a mass shooting in
California were its followers.