Police officers investigate a crime scene at Leytonstone underground station in east London, Britain.
London - Police said initial reports indicated the man, believed to be aged 29, had also threatened other bystanders.
Published: Sun 6 Dec 2015, 12:16 PM
Last updated: Sun 6 Dec 2015, 6:20 PM
A man wielding a knife slashed a man in an east London metro station on Saturday, reportedly screaming "this is for Syria", before police used a stun gun to subdue him in what they described as a terrorist incident.
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 officers at just after 1900 GMT.
Police said initial reports indicated the man, believed to be aged 29, had also threatened other bystanders. One 56-year-old man suffered serious but not life-threatening injuries. Two other people had minor injuries, police said.
"We are treating this as a terrorist incident," Richard Walton, who leads the Counter Terrorism Command at London's Metropolitan Police, said in a statement.
An eyewitness quoted by The Guardian and other British newspapers said the attacker appeared to claim that he was retaliating for Western attacks on militants in Syria.
Police declined to comment on those reports and it was not immediately possible to independently verify them.
Britain is on its second-highest alert level of "severe", meaning a militant attack is considered highly likely, mainly because of the threat posed by militants in Syria and Iraq who are encouraging supporters to attack the West.
After militants claimed responsibility for the attacks on Paris last month that killed 130 people, British Prime Minister David Cameron won approval from lawmakers on Wednesday to bomb them in Syria.
British warplanes first bombed oil fields controlled by militants on Thursday.
THREAT TO BRITAIN?
Cameron said air strikes would not increase the chances of an attack on Britain, since militants already viewed Britain as a top target with seven plots foiled over the past year.
An eyewitness to the knife attack was quoted as saying the attacker had screamed about Syria.
"I just saw a lot of people running but I ignored it and kept walking to get my train, but suddenly what I saw, I couldn't believe my eyes and what I saw was a guy with a knife," the Guardian quoted an eyewitness as saying.
Such apparently random attacks are extremely difficult to thwart because they require relatively little planning and very basic equipment.
In 2013, Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale ran over Fusilier Rigby near Woolwich Barracks before setting upon him with knives and a meat cleaver in an attempt to behead him.
They asked bystanders to film them with bloodied hands, calmly justifying their actions as a response to Britain's foreign policy. They were jailed for life last year.
British security services say about two-thirds of their time is spent countering international militants, much of that connected to Syria.
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