Stabbing leaves three dead in the U.K.

A 25-year-old suspect stabbed people sitting in a park in Reading, England, on Saturday evening. Among the dead was a 36-year-old secondary school teacher named James Furlong and an American identified by the Philadelphia Inquirer as Joe Ritchie-Bennett. Three others sustained injuries in the terror attack that lasted about five minutes. Britain’s national news agency identified the suspect, who is in custody, as Khairi Saadallah, a Libyan refugee living in Reading.

What was the attacker’s motive? Neil Basu, Britain’s top counterterrorism officer, said the motivation for the stabbings is still uncertain but noted it was a terrorist incident. British security services investigated Saadallah last year as a person who might travel abroad for extremist reasons but dropped the case after concluding he was not a major threat. Authorities said they are not looking for any additional suspects and did not increase the terrorism threat level from “substantial.”

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Mindy Belz’s 2016 report on refugees fleeing to Europe.