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A man stabbed an 11-year-old girl and her mother Monday in one of London’s busiest squares, in a knife attack that comes days after a similar incident sparked riots across the United Kingdom, Sky News reported.
Police said a 32-year-old man attacked the girl and her 34-year-old mother in Leicester Square before he was stopped by a nearby shop security guard.
Authorities detained the attacker, adding that the assault was not terror-related and there was no known connection between the perpetrator and the victims.
The young girl required hospital treatment for her injuries, but they are not life-threatening. Her mother sustained minor injuries.
The incident occurred in a highly frequented area of central London, attracting around 2.5 million visitors weekly.
It follows days of riots ignited by a deadly stabbing attack in northwestern England in late July. The alleged attacker, 17-year-old Axel Rudakubana, killed three girls aged between six and nine years old and injured 10 others, including two adults, at a dance class in the town of Southport.
Rudakubana was revealed to have been born in the UK by Rwandan parents, but misinformation from social media platforms and far-right pundits and groups alleged the attacker was an Islamist migrant, prompting their followers to launch demonstrations across various cities, as well as carry out attacks on mosques, hotels housing asylum seekers and non-white individuals.
The demonstrations escalated into violent confrontations and resulted in more than 900 arrests, with 450 people charged for offenses related to the riots, according to BNN Bloomberg.
Commentators said the detentions have proved a challenge for the UK’s judiciary, as courts are grappling with a record-high backlog and years of underfunding that have seen the departure of many legal professionals and the closure of many courts and law firms.
Despite these challenges, the newly-elected Labour government believes the courts and prisons can handle the influx of cases, with current prison capacity at 98.3 percent as of Aug. 2.
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