Three people were rushed to hospital after a reported “machete” attack at a health centre in Tower Hamlets, the London Metropolitan Police have confirmed.
Officers were called to St Stephen’s Road on Wednesday morning at just after 11 a.m., following reports of a knife attack at a GP surgery, with one man was arrested at the scene.
Scotland Yard said: “Officers including specialist firearms officers attended and found three people suffering from stab injuries.
“They were taken to hospital by London Ambulance Service; their injuries are not being treated as life-threatening.
“A man was detained nearby and taken to hospital suffering from an injury,” the police spokesman said, adding that the incident was “not terror related”.
Two of the victims were attacked inside the Tredegar Practice on St Stephen’s Road while another was stabbed at St Stephen’s Health Centre nearby, according to the Evening Standard.
Members of the public described a man with long hair storming the surgery and attacking people in the waiting room completely at random, according to The Telegraph, while another witness told social media that a “machete” was used in the assaults.
At the Tredegar Practice he reportedly slashed two men and threatened a mother-of-three with his “massive” knife, before stabbing a “wheelchair-bound woman” who looked to be “in her 60s or 70s” at the nearby St Stephen’s Health Centre, according to bystanders.
Billy Jones, 27, who works near the centre, reported that a man “wielding a knife in each hand” had “stabbed an elderly lady out of nowhere”, adding that the assailant had emerged from the building “wearing Speedos”.
On Tuesday, London mayor Sadiq Khan revealed he was planning to hike council tax by the highest possible amount for the second year in a row in order to pay for more policing, as killings in the capital reached the highest number for a decade.
“What I am doing is making sure I fill the hole left by the massive cuts in policing and I’ll be announcing my budget this week in relation to what more money I can give to policing by raising council tax and other tools I’ve got in my toolkit,” Khan told BBC London.
The Labour politician has repeatedly blamed “police cuts” and reductions in taxpayer funding of youth services and charities for surging violence in the multicultural capital, which Khan insists must be treated as a “public health crisis” rather than with tough, law and order style policies.
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