Finnish police label fatal stabbing attack terrorism

Finnish police patrol after fatal stabbing in Turku

(Image credit: Vesa Moilanen/Getty Images)

last updated 19 August 2017

Police in Finland arrested a man accused of stabbing eight people, killing two and injuring six more, on Friday in the southwest city of Turku. Police reported that they shot the 18-year-old Moroccan man in the leg after his alleged attack.

"The act had been investigated as murder, but during the night we received additional information which indicates that the criminal offenses are now terrorist killings," authorities said Saturday.

Eyewitness reports of the incident offer conflicting accounts; some say the suspect was heard yelling "Allahu akbar," but others say the screams were people saying "watch out" in Finnish.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.

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