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Detectives said they were hunting down a suspect after receiving reports of stabbings at four separate locations in the city center between 12:30 a.m. (2330 GMT Saturday) and 2:30 a.m.
A police forensic officer gathers evidence near evidence markers within a cordon on Irving Street, following a major stabbing incident in central Birmingham, central England, on September 6, 2020. Image: AFP
BIRMINGHAM – A man was killed and two people seriously injured during a “random” stabbing attack that lasted for several hours in the second British city of Birmingham, police said Sunday.
Detectives said they were hunting down a suspect after receiving reports of stabbings at four separate locations in the city center between 12:30 a.m. (2330 GMT Saturday) and 2:30 a.m.
But they ruled out hate crimes, gang violence and terrorism.
“It appears to be random in terms of the people who were attacked,” said West Midlands Police Chief Superintendent Steve Graham, adding that it was being treated as a homicide.
Britain has been on high alert after two mass stabbings in London in the past year, in which both perpetrators – convicted Islamic extremists released early from prison – were shot dead by armed officers.
In June, a man was charged with murder after three people died in a park in Reading, west London, in an attack investigated by counter-terrorism police.
Then six people were injured, including a police officer, in a hotel housing asylum seekers in the Scottish city of Glasgow. The armed police shot and killed the alleged attacker.
The latest incident comes amid concerns about levels of knife crime in Britain, particularly in the capital London.
The number of stabbings in England and Wales increased by six percent in the year to the end of March, according to the Office for National Statistics.
Birmingham is one of Britain’s most ethnically diverse cities, with a population of over a million, and has had an explosive recent history of gang violence.
In January 2003, a gang opened fire with an illegal semi-automatic machine gun on a rival group. Two teenagers who were passersby died in the hail of bullets.
‘GROUPS ON GROUPS’
Details of the identity of the victims were not immediately released, except that the two seriously injured were a man and a woman.
Five other people were taken to hospital with minor injuries, as police declared a “serious incident” and said the incidents were related.
Eyewitnesses told AFP about the violence in one of the four locations, in and around the Arcadian Center, a popular spot full of restaurants, nightclubs and bars.
Cara Curran, a nightclub promoter working at the Arcadian Center Saturday night, said she saw “groups upon groups” of people fighting in and around the venue and heard the use of “racial slurs.”
“I had seen a lot of tensions built up overnight, which was not like what I had seen before,” he said.
“I had left with my boyfriend. I heard a commotion and saw several police officers coming our way. I headed where I saw them coming and everything just unfolded in front of me.
“It was a great street fight. It really didn’t feel like a fight. It was just several people on top of each other, not one on one.”
She added: “There were all ethnicities there, there were Asians, blacks, whites. It was not just this ethnic group against this ethnic group, it was a group of ethnic groups with another group, and somehow they just did.”
SOCIAL EXCLUSION
Shabana Mahmood, who represents the area in the UK parliament for the main opposition Labor Party, described the events as “deeply disturbing”.
Local councilor Yvonne Mosquito, also from the Labor Party, said the violence was “traumatic” for everyone involved.
Mosquito, a former mayor of the city, praised the police for tackling so-called “black on black” violence in Birmingham in the early 2000s.
But he said there remained a real problem with social exclusion among young people, including drug trafficking at “county borders.”
The Arcadian center, where Birmingham Gay Village and Chinatown are located, was vibrant and popular, although there had been “some problems” previously, he told AFP.
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