A 13-year-old boy has died after a stabbing attack in northeast London.
Police were called to reports a 36-year-old man was wielding a sword and attacking members of the public around 7am.
Officers were also caught up in the rampage in Hainault, northeast London, near the Tube station.
Man with sword ‘attacks people and police officers’ – follow live
Police also said the man crashed a vehicle into a house in nearby Thurlow Gardens, before reportedly stabbing a number of people and being arrested.
London Ambulance Service said they treated five people at the scene and took them to hospital – including the 13-year-old boy.
In an update this afternoon, Chief Superintendent Stuart Bell, who leads local policing, confirmed the teenage boy had died.
He said: “He was taken to hospital after being stabbed and sadly died a short while after.
“The child’s family are being supported firstly by my local officers and now with some specialist officers and everyone across the Met is keeping them in our thoughts at this unimaginably difficult time.”
Police responded to reports of a vehicle driven into a house this morning
He also confirmed that two other members of the public were in hospital with injuries believed to be not life-threatening.
Along with them, two officers received “significant injuries” during the incident and will undergo surgery, police said.
Eyewitnesses described hearing shrieking and seeing someone receive CPR at the scene.
Pic:@ell_pht
Emergency services on the scene of the incident in Hainault. Pic: Shutterstock
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Video showed a man wielding a large sword outside a number of residential properties.
Police added that they did not think it was a targeted attack, or terror-related, and they were working to establish the circumstances of what took place.
Eyewitness
Chris Bates told Sky News he saw police apprehend a suspect wielding a “big samurai sword”.
He said that, after confronting the suspect, police screamed at them to drop the sword, before they Tasered him, and “piled on top of him”, arresting him.
Another local resident said she saw a body on the ground as she hid by her window, while a sword-wielding man shouted “do you believe in god?” outside her home.
The witness, who didn’t want to be named, said: “He was wielding his sword trying to attack the police but then they sprayed him and he ran away.
“He was shouting at the police ‘do you believe in God?’, also at the ambulance.
“We were very scared and trying to hide and not show ourselves through the window, because he was standing right next to our house and he could have seen us if he looked up.
“We were trying to hide but also at the same time taking video of him attacking the police, and of the body on the floor, so, yeah, we were very scared and we didn’t know what to do.”
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