A suspect has been arrested after at least three people in Norway were stabbed with a sharp object, leaving one critically injured, police said.
Police at first described the attack in the village of Nore as random, but later clarified that there was “a family relationship” between the alleged assailant and at least one of the victims.
“This is a family from Syria, and the perpetrator and one of the injured are married,” police inspector Odd Skei Kostveit said in a statement.
Police said the suspect was a man who had received a restraining order in December following an investigation of domestic violence.
The suspect, who was also injured, was held on suspicion of grievous bodily harm, police said. Two people were flown to a nearby hospital by helicopter.
Nore is located about 62 miles east of Oslo, Norway’s capital, in the Numedal valley.
Norwegian media said a bus driver and students from a local school overpowered the suspect.
Police spokesman Tor Richard Jansen confirmed that civilians overpowered the alleged assailant and “handed him over to firefighters” who arrived before the police.
William Scott, who was in the area delivering goods, told the VG newspaper he saw an injured woman lying on the ground. He said: “At first I thought it was a collision because there was a large pool of blood on the ground.”
Nore is close to Kongsberg, where five people were fatally stabbed and four wounded last October when Espen Andersen Brathen attacked strangers with a bow and arrows and knives.
He has pleaded guilty in a trial that started this week. Brathen also faces 11 counts of attempted murder for the attack in Kongsberg, a former mining town of 26,000 people.
