:quality(75)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/elcomercio/3H2PRQSYQ5BVLAV4NFUHGCF5NQ.jpg "Four people injured in ‘random’ knife attack in New Zealand")
Four people were slightly injured this Thursday in a knife attack in the north of the city of Aucklandthe most populous of New Zealandin a “random” incident that ended with the arrest of the attacker.
“It was not a planned incident but a random attack,” Superintendent Naila Hassan said today at a press conference broadcast by local media without specifying more information or the reason for the incident.
The police chief explained that the alleged assailant, who was not identified, is a local who stabbed passers-by shortly before noon while moving on foot through Murrays Bay, about 18 kilometers north of Auckland.
The attacker, who according to witnesses cited by the New Zealand Herald newspaper was a man in his 20s carrying a 20-centimeter knife, was captured by “five members of the public” in nearby Mairangi Bay, who later handed him over to authorities. .
The incident was “extremely quick” and the police “responded quickly, apprehended the offender and prevented further damage to our communities,” Hassan said.
New Zealand, a sleepy country with low crime data, has been the scene of two terrorist attacks since 2019.
In September 2021, a jihadist – who was killed by police – injured six people in a knife attack in an Auckland supermarket, in an incident that hastened the passage of a new anti-terrorism law.
Meanwhile, in March 2019, a white supremacist killed 51 people and injured 40 others in a high-powered weapons attack on two mosques in the city of Christchurch.
The perpetrator of that supremacist attack, the Australian Brenton Tarrant, was sentenced to life in prison without the right to parole and was the first person tried for terrorism in the history of this oceanic country.