Teenage boy stabbed to death on London bus

LONDON: A 14-year-old boy was stabbed to death in broad daylight on a London bus on Tuesday in the latest knife-crime incident in the British capital, police said.

The victim was killed on the city’s familiar double-decker red bus in Woolwich, southeast London, police said in a statement.

Paramedics treated the boy for stab wound injuries at the scene, “but he very sadly died shortly after medics arrived,” the statement added. No arrest was immediately reported.

The incident comes after an 11-year-old girl was seriously injured in a stabbing in the busy Leicester Square area of London last August.

A 32-year-old man was later arrested.

Prime Minister Keir Starmer has called knife crime a “national crisis”.

Office for National Statistics data released in October said that knife crime in England and Wales was up four percent in the 12 months to June compared to the previous year.

It was still lower than pre-pandemic levels, however.

The Labour government, in power since July, has pledged to halve knife crime in the next decade.

A ban on some knives and machetes came into force in September and the government hopes to prohibit ninja swords.

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On the other hand, the United States witnessed shocking increase in attacks on public during the last three weeks. On December 18, 2024, at least one person died and nine more were injured, after what the local police is calling a mass shooting, in Maryland. Shots were fired outside the Johnson Funeral Home in Towson Maryland, at 8500 block of Loch Raven Blvd.

The next day on Dec 19, a 14-year-old girl and a teacher at her private Christian school were named by Wisconsin authorities on Wednesday night as the victims of a school shooter earlier this week.

A 14-year-old girl and a teacher at her private Christian school were named by Wisconsin authorities on Wednesday night as the victims of a school shooter earlier this week.

Moreover, a42-year-old Texas man crashed a pickup truck into a crowd celebrating New Year’s Day in New Orleans’ French Quarter and then opened fire on police, killing at least 10 people and injuring 35, in an early morning attack the FBI said was a potential act of terrorism.

The driver, identified by the FBI as Shamsud-Din Jabbar, a US citizen from Texas, died at the scene in the shootout with police and may have been acting in concert with others, officials said.