Good morning. After Saturday night’s shocking knife attack on a train bound for King’s Cross from Doncaster, yesterday eyewitnesses started to tell their stories. They described a horrifying 15 minutes, in which a man armed with a knife made his way through the train as passengers tried to run away, blockaded themselves in toilets, and huddled at the end of the train without knowing where they would be able to get off.
One victim, a member of staff whose bravery is said to have saved lives, remained in a very serious condition at last report. With initial suspicions of a terror motive later ruled out by police, a single suspect is now in custody. Today’s newsletter explains what we know so far. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
UK-China relations | A British university complied with a demand from Beijing to halt research about human rights abuses in China, leading to a major project being dropped, the Guardian can reveal.
Budget | Proposals being considered by Rachel Reeves to cut tax on electricity bills will backfire, experts have warned, resulting in a giveaway to richer homeowners and undermining the UK’s climate commitments. The chancellor is understood to be looking at plans to eliminate the 5% VAT charge on electricity bills as a fast and simple way to reduce bills for consumers.
France | The brazen daytime heist at the Louvre was carried out by petty criminals rather than professionals from the world of organised crime, the Paris prosecutor has said, describing two of the suspects as a couple with children. Four people have been charged over the robbery, with the jewels yet to be recovered.
Reform UK | Nigel Farage will promise a bonfire of business regulation as he spells out his party’s economic policies in more detail than ever in an attempt to bolster its reputation for fiscal credibility. Farage is also dropping a commitment made at the last election to deliver £90bn of tax cuts.
UK news | High street clinics offering pregnancy scans could be putting unborn babies and their mothers in danger through a lack of properly trained staff, UK experts have warned.
In depth: ‘You need to run’
The 999 calls from passengers aboard the London North Eastern Railway (LNER) service from Doncaster to King’s Cross began at 7.39pm on Saturday, after the train left Peterborough station in Cambridgeshire. As Ben Quinn explains in this piece, the first indication for many passengers that something was wrong came in a tannoy announcement: “We are aware there is an incident,” a member of staff said. “Just keep yourselves safe.”
About 15 minutes after it began, the train made an unscheduled stop at Huntingdon station, where passengers fled, the injured were tended to by paramedics, and police arrested two suspects, one of whom was later released without charge. The other was kept in police custody, on suspicion of attempted murder.
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Eyewitness accounts | ‘What if we run out of carriages to run through?’
Joe, 24, was returning home from the Nottingham Forest versus Manchester United match and texting his friends about his plans for later that night when people started running through his carriage, saying “You need to run, you need to run.”
“At first it didn’t really register what was going on,” Joe told the BBC. “And then quickly, I just dropped my stuff and I started running along with them.” The question on his mind, he added, was: “What if we run out of carriages to run through? What if we reach the end of the train?”
Another passenger, Olly Foster, posted a detailed account of his experience on social media. He said that as he ran, he put his hand on a seat and found that it was covered in blood. With nowhere to go when they reached the end of the train, “I was standing there with a few others trying to find any kind of weapon – one person I knew got ready with a Jack Daniel’s bottle. I had nothing. For what felt like 10 minutes, I watched that carriage doorway waiting to see a figure appear.” He told the BBC that he saw an older man block the attacker from stabbing a girl, leaving him with injuries to his head and neck.
Dayna Arnold, a project manager, told the Mirror that she had been sitting in Coach J, where the attack appears to have begun, and was separated from her partner in the chaos. “I was running and when I looked back I saw the knifeman running after me,” she said. “I fell down and I just said, ‘Please don’t kill me.’ Something shifted in his face and he just carried on. He said: ‘The devil is not going to win.’”
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The victims | ‘Heroic’ staff member in life-threatening condition
In a statement released very early yesterday morning, British Transport police said nine people had been taken to hospital with life-threatening injuries, as well as one other who was less seriously hurt. By yesterday afternoon, Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge, a major trauma centre for eastern England, confirmed that it was treating the two victims still in a life-threatening condition.
By 6pm on Sunday, five people had been discharged from hospital. One of those remaining was still in a life-threatening condition: described by police as a member of LNER staff who tried to stop the attacker. “Detectives have reviewed the CCTV from the train,” the police added, “and it is clear his actions were nothing short of heroic and undoubtedly saved many people’s lives.”
There is no further information as yet on the identity of the victims. But the driver has been named as Andrew Johnson, a Royal Navy and Iraq war veteran. He was said to be “very shaken” but “good”, and was praised by the Aslef drivers’ union for his actions. Nigel Roebuck, an Aslef officer, said: “[Johnson] didn’t stop the train in the middle of two stations where it’s obviously difficult for the emergency services to reach, but he carried on going until he got to Huntingdon, where the response was pretty much already there.” Johnson told ITV News: “I was only doing my job. It was my colleague who is in hospital who was the brave one.”
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The suspect | ‘I could hear him shouting: “Kill me, kill me, kill me”’
Two men, aged 32 and 35, were initially arrested. The 35-year-old was released without charge, and BTP said: “It was reported in good faith to officers responding to the incident that he was involved in the attack, and following inquiries we can confirm that he was not involved.”
The other man remained in police custody as of this morning on suspicion of attempted murder. He is from Peterborough, and boarded the train at the station there. Police said a knife was recovered.
A taxi driver who was waiting outside the station when the train arrived, Viorel Turturica, told the Daily Mail that he saw “a man dressed in black holding a huge kitchen knife in his hand runs past my car, at 7.47pm. The police arrive seconds later and I could hear him shouting: ‘Kill me, kill me, kill me’ to them. They then Taser him and as soon as he is down they say to him: ‘Drop your weapon.’”
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Ethnicity disclosure | Police ‘damned if they do and damned if they don’t’
Amid false claims that the incident was a terror attack by Asian Islamists, police revealed that the suspect was a “black British national” and that the other man arrested and then released was a “British national of Caribbean descent”. The decision renewed a debate over new police guidance to disclose the ethnicity of suspects in such cases.
That policy came in after the murder of three schoolgirls in Southport last summer, when misinformation on social media contributed to serious unrest. Reform and the Conservatives said yesterday that the police had taken too long to release the information in this case. Others said the police had done the right thing.
But there are also fears that cases like this reinforce the idea that the suspect’s ethnicity is a factor. Dal Babu, a former chief superintendent in the Metropolitan police force, told the Guardian that he felt the police now have little choice, but added: “They are damned if they do and damned if they don’t … We are in a position in our country where race is being amplified by far-right racist groups and the police are being forced to respond.”
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Search for motive | ‘Nothing to suggest that this is a terrorist incident’
As the incident unfolded, police initially declared “Plato”, the national codeword used when responding to a “marauding terror attack”. But that was later rescinded, and police said: “There is nothing to suggest that this is a terrorist incident.”
As they try to establish a motive, detectives are focused on whether there is any history of mental health concerns over the suspect. They are also seeking to determine whether he was known to other authorities before the attack took place.
With the attack following a mass stabbing in Uxbridge last week that killed 49-year-old Wayne Broadhurst and injured two others, politicians on the right have meanwhile claimed the Cambridgeshire attack as evidence of an epidemic of violence. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch told the BBC: “We’re seeing more and more violence on our streets … We cannot be a country where people are innocently going about their business and facing this level of violent crime.”
Official statistics do not capture whether random attacks are becoming more prevalent. But overall, violent crime is a third lower than it was a decade ago, and 75% down on its 1995 peak. Knife crime has fallen in the past year, and NHS admissions for assaults with a sharp object are down 10% on 2024.
What else we’ve been reading
Someone once told me that the definition of being a workaholic is not the hours you work, but how much you think about work when you’re not doing it. For anyone still looking to parse that definition, Jenny Kleeman’s piece on how she used work as a crutch in a very dark time is a riveting read. Poppy Noor, newsletters team
The new magazine Equator launched with a number of superb features and essays last week. This one, by author and literary translator Na Zhong, examines a shocking Silicon Valley murder case that became a cause célèbre in China, and a vessel for China’s vexed relationship with the expatriate American Dream. Archie
Saturday magazine’s interview with Margaret Atwood – including some amazing pictures, like the above – was as engaging as one would hope for from such a literary legend. Poppy
The mass killings that have unfolded in the Sudanese city of El Fasher since it fell to the Rapid Support Forces militia group last week were “all predicted and predictable,” Nesrine Malik writes. “Sudan’s war is described as forgotten, but in reality it is tolerated and relegated.” Archie
Jason Okundaye’s opinion piece on why we’re all weirdly obsessed with young people’s politics are is well worth a read: “[It’s] about aggravating existing fears that people may have about the children in their lives – that they might be influenced by radical ideas … until they are unrecognisable to those who love them”. Poppy
Sport
Cricket | India defeated South Africa to secure their first ever Women’s World Cup, winning by 52 runs in front of a rapturous home crowd.
Football | Manchester City rose to second place in the Premier League table thanks to an Erling Haaland brace in their 3-1 win over Bournemouth. They sit six points behind leaders Arsenal.
Football | Wolves are considering a return for former head coach Gary O’Neil after sacking Vítor Pereira, with Middlesbrough’s Rob Edwards another leading candidate. Pereira was dismissed yesterday morning, less than 24 hours after a 3-0 defeat at Fulham.
The front pages
The Guardian splashes on “‘Heroic’ rail worker in fight for life after tackling train knife attacker” while the Times also hails “‘Hero’ train worker who protected his passengers”. So does the Express: “Hero steward bravely ‘saved many lives’”. “The devil’s not going to win” is what the assailant told one passenger, according to the Mail. The Mirror uses that for its headline as well, under the strapline “Terror on the tracks”, and the Telegraph’s version is “The devil’s not going to win, train attacker told passengers”. The i paper moves the story forward: “Police to patrol trains as suspect in custody over stabbing attack”. Readers are directed inside the Metro to read about the Cambridgeshire attack; the top story is “Scandal of risky High St baby scans”. The attack is the picture lead in the Financial Times but the main story is “City bosses fear for hiring as minimum wage catches up with graduate salaries”.
Today in Focus
The multimillion pound baby powder case
Esther Addley reports on a class action suit of more than 3,000 cancer survivors and their loved ones against Johnson & Johnson.
Cartoon of the day | Ella Baron
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Rip tides are a terrifying force, capable of pulling people miles out to sea before they know it. But Elizabeth Dangerfield’s story of being caught out by one when a teenager in Australia reminds us, as the title of the series to which it belongs would suggest, of the kindness of strangers. “I was quite far out from the shore at this point and the last time I made my way to the surface, I heard a voice say, ‘Do you need a hand?’ I was too out of breath to speak so I just nodded and this person, a surfer on his board, pulled me out and took me to the beach. I didn’t even see his face.”
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Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
