UK police charge man with attempted murder after injuring 11 in train stabbing

UK police charged a 32-year-old man with attempted murder on Monday over a mass stabbing attack on a train that wounded 11 people and said he also tried to kill someone at a London transit station earlier the same day.

British Transport Police said Anthony Williams is charged with 10 counts of attempted murder, one of actual bodily harm and one of possession of a bladed article over the attack on Saturday.

Police said he is also charged with attempted murder over an earlier incident at Pontoon Dock light rail station in London just before 1 am (2 am CET) on Saturday, in which a victim "suffered facial injuries after being attacked with a knife" by an assailant who fled the scene.

Police said investigators are also "looking at other possible linked offences."

Police say they are not treating the train stabbings as an act of terror and are not looking for other suspects.

A second man initially arrested as a suspect was released without charge on Sunday after it was determined the 35-year-old was not involved.

Williams, a British citizen from the city of Peterborough in eastern England, made a brief appearance at Peterborough Magistrates' Court on Monday.

Williams, who was flanked by four security officers as he stood in the dock wearing a grey prison tracksuit and handcuffs, was ordered detained until his next hearing on 1 December.

He was not asked to enter pleas.

The minutes-long stabbing spree spread fear and panic through a train bound from Doncaster in northern England to London on Saturday evening.

The train was about halfway through its journey and had just departed from a stop at Peterborough when police began receiving calls about people being stabbed on board.

Passengers described scenes of panic as bloodied travellers raced down the train to get away from the knifeman.

Eleven people were treated in hospital. The most seriously wounded victim is a member of railway staff who tried to stop the attacker. Police called his actions "nothing short of heroic."

He is in a critical but stable condition. Four other victims also remained hospitalised on Monday.

Williams was arrested when the train made an emergency stop in the town of Huntingdon in eastern England. Police say he was detained within eight minutes of officers receiving the first emergency calls.

Authorities said the attack was an isolated incident but stepped up security on the railway, with armed police patrolling major train stations on Monday.

The government rejected calls to introduce airport-style passenger and baggage screening at Britain's 3,500 railway stations, saying it wouldn't be "proportionate or practical".

In the UK, which has strict gun-control laws, almost half of all homicides involve a knife or sharp instrument.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer's centre-left government has pledged to reduce knife crime and has tightened rules on knife purchases and banned certain types of blades.

It claims to have had some success, with the number of knife killings down by more than 20% in the year to March 2025 from the previous 12 months, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).