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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!”
A pool of blood near the ticket barriers at the Leytonstone Underground station, about 10km 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.
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 ISIS 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 Assad mocked Cameron’s strategy, saying it would make the situation worse, not better.
