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Police: 2 dead in Finland stabbing; suspect arrested

Police: 2 dead in Finland stabbing; suspect arrested
Posted at 10:04 AM, Aug 18, 2017
and last updated 2017-08-18 12:14:59-04

Police in Finland have shot and arrested a suspect after several people were injured in a stabbing spree in the southwestern city of Turku.

Two people are dead in the attack, the Associated Press reported. 

The suspect was shot in the leg after the attack, said police, who have warned the public to move away from the city center.

Police said on Twitter they were searching for more possible perpetrators in Turku and that they were patrolling a shopping mall.

 

 

Finnish media published photographs of the attack site, and one showed a body covered with a white sheet. Another by state-run YLE shows a small crowd around someone apparently bleeding on a cobblestone road.

YLE reported that the attack occurred at two marketplaces close to each other in the city center -- Kauppatori, known in English as Central Market Square, as well as the Puutori Market Square. Several ambulances are in the area.

Turku lies around 140 kilometers (around 85 miles) west of the capital, Helsinki.

'There was blood everywhere'

Kent Svensson, 44, from Sweden who was in Turku said he witnessed a man with "a huge white knife" running and stabbing people in his path.

"It was really horrible. We were sitting on a terrace just next to the square and this woman just screamed like hell and this guy was standing in front of her with a huge knife just stabbing people," he said.

"There was blood everywhere," he said, adding that he saw a victim lying on the ground.

Finnish police in the Eastern Uusimaa region on Twitter warned citizens to be on alert near the Helsinki-Vantaan airport and train stations.