New Stabbings in Britain and Turkey

A frenzy of violent and bloody stabbings for no reason is spreading across Europe, from Britain to Turkey. On Monday morning, an 11-year-old girl and her 34-year-old mother became the victims of a brutal and still unexplained attack in Leicester Square, one of London’s busiest areas. The man, Ioan Pintaru, a 32-year-old homeless Romanian, armed with a knife, attacked the woman and the girl in broad daylight amid a crowd of tourists and passersby.

Thanks to the intervention of a store security officer, the worst was avoided: the offender was blocked and subsequently apprehended by the police who arrived on the scene. Nevertheless, Pintaru managed to stab the girl eight times in different parts of her body, from her face to her shoulder and neck. The girl was urgently hospitalized and although her condition is serious, her life is not in danger.

The dramatic episode takes place in an already extremely tense political and social context in Britain. Just two weeks ago, the nation was shocked by the Southport massacre when three little girls were murdered by a 17-year-old armed with a knife. The massacre triggered a series of riots that British authorities claim were instigated by far-right Islamophobic and anti-immigration British groups, such as the English Defense League (EDL), as well as international groups.

According to investigative journalism by the British newspaper The Times, a Finnish neo-Nazi provoked some of the anti-immigration riots in the United Kingdom. The man had previously been under investigation by the Finnish police for various threats. After the drama in Southport, a man created a Telegram feed called “Southport Wake Up,” posting numerous anti-immigrant and anti-Jewish messages. At the time of its removal from Telegram, the group had more than 13,000 users.

And despite a temporary drop in street violence, tensions in the United Kingdom remain very high, and this dramatic episode threatens to ignite new tensions. Downing Street confirmed that “the state of alert remains high,” and as a precautionary measure, Prime Minister Keir Starmer decided to stay in the United Kingdom, canceling his vacation in Europe.

Starmer was most likely going to visit Turkey, one of the most popular Mediterranean countries among German and British retirees. And he was right: again, on Monday, August 12, near a mosque in the town of Eskishehir, in northwestern Turkey, about 230 kilometers from the capital Ankara, an 18-year-old stabbed five people.

According to the Turkish press, the young man “was wearing a helmet, mask, and body armor, presumably influenced by a character from the more famous online military video game PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds,” better known as PUBG. With an axe on his belt and a knife in his hand, the attacker broadcast the attacks live on social media, captured on his helmet camera, before he was stopped and arrested by police. Of the five injured, three are hospitalized in intensive care. “This fact is a concrete example of how digital and gaming addiction can have a negative impact on the health of our youth. We are determined to fight this growing problem,” Turkish Family and Social Services Minister Mahinur Ozdemir Goktaş said after the attack.