Finland investigating stabbing spree as terrorism

Finnish police are investigating a knife attack in Turku that killed two people and injured eight others as an act of terrorism, they said Saturday.

Police shot and wounded the attacker minutes after he went on a stabbing rampage in a Turku market square on Friday afternoon.

The attack was intended to murder with "terrorist intent," police said in a statement.

They identified the attacker as an 18-year-old Moroccan who arrived in Finland in 2016 and has been "part of the asylum process."

He is currently in a hospital for treatment of a gunshot wound to the leg.

More arrests

Police arrested four other Moroccans in an overnight raid on an apartment in Turku. They also issued an arrest warrant for a fifth person believed to be outside of Finland.

"We are investigating the role of these five other people, but we are not sure yet if they had anything to do with [the attack] ... We will interrogate them; after that we can tell you more. But they had been in contact with the main suspect," Detective Superintendent Markus Laine of the National Bureau of Investigation told the Agence France-Presse news agency.

The stabbings come as Europe is on high alert following twin car ramming terror attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort town that killed 14 people and wounded more than a hundred. A number of the suspects in what police are describing as a terror cell are of Moroccan origin.

The so-called "Islamic State" group claimed responsibility for both attacks in Spain. 

cw/jlw (AFP, dpa, Reuters)