“It was the result of ‘mental health issues’, and a spontaneous attack, victims selected at random - no indication of radicalization or terrorist motivation”....no racial motives. The significance of the incident’s location was ignored.

  The attack occurred in the late Joe Cox’s district

Courtesy Jez Turner: Breaking! Somali stabbed people at the site of the makeshift memorial to Jo Cox!

Placards, cards, flowers and messages to Jo Cox adorned the railings at this (south-east) corner of Russell Square.  I walked past on Saturday night and counted about 20 or so items tied to the railings by the entrance to the gardens here with one big one saying ‘‘Jo Cox not forgotten’‘, and even late at night tourists would stop and read them. Look at the map of the incident on this BBC article! - Jez Turner

LONDON (AP) — A Norwegian-Somali teenager went on a knife rampage through London’s Russell Square, a hub for students and tourists, fatally stabbing an American woman and injuring five other people.

Police said Thursday that it wasn’t terrorism — but in a city on edge after a summer of attacks elsewhere in Europe, both authorities and London residents initially responded as if it were. Police flooded the streets with extra officers and mobilized counterterror detectives before saying the shocking burst of violence appeared to have been “triggered by mental-health issues.”

Police officers used a stun gun to subdue the 19-year-old suspect at the scene of the stabbings late Wednesday, among busy streets lined with hotels close to the British Museum.

“Terror in London” ran the headline in the Mail Online, one of several media outlets to speculate that the attack was an act of terrorism. Police initially said terrorism was “one line of inquiry being explored.”

But hours later Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said “we have found no evidence of radicalization or anything that would suggest the man in our custody was in any way motivated by terrorism.”

He said detectives from the force’s murder and terrorism squads had interviewed the suspect, his family and witnesses and searched properties.

“We believe this was a spontaneous attack and the victims were selected at random,” Rowley said.

London Mayor Sadiq Khan said “there is no evidence at all that this man was motivated by Daesh” — another name for the Islamic State group — or similar organizations.

Rowley said the suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, is a Norwegian of Somali ancestry — though police don’t consider that “relevant to the motivation for his actions.” Norway’s National Criminal Investigation Service said he had left the Scandinavian country in 2002, when he was a small child.

The name of the dead woman, thought to be in her 60s, hasn’t been released. U.S. Ambassador Matthew Barzun confirmed she was American, tweeting: “Heartbreaking news that a U.S. citizen was killed in #RussellSquare attack. My prayers are with all the victims and their loved ones.”

Two Australians, an Israeli, an American and a British citizen were wounded, none with life-threatening injuries.

While knife crime is a regular occurrence in London — there have been two other blade killings this week — the scale and randomness of the rampage rattled nerves. It came just days after authorities warned the British public to be vigilant in light of attacks inspired by the Islamic State group elsewhere in Europe.

Student Megan Sharrock, 18, looked out her window and saw someone lying on the sidewalk under a blanket.

“There was like two rivers of blood running away from the person so we thought, yeah, someone has been killed,” she said.

“It’s really shocking, (a) scary world we live in to think that could happen,” she said. “That could happen to anyone, just walking down the street.”

Helen Edwards, 33, who lives in the area, came out for a walk and found it thronging with armed police near. In a city with vivid memories of the deadly July 7, 2005, bomb attacks on public transport — two of which struck near Russell Square — she immediately suspected that an attack had occurred.

“There is always that thing in the back of your mind,” she said. “You live with that threat of terrorism or other crimes in the back of your mind. It wasn’t a huge shock I guess.”

The response to the attack is complicated by the frequent overlap between terrorism and mental illness. Many “lone wolf” attackers have a history of mental-health problems, including a Syrian who blew himself up in the German town of Ansbach last month and a Somali man who was sentenced to life this week for trying to behead a London Underground passenger.

Emily Corner, a researcher at University College London who studies the links between mental illness and terrorism, said every incident of major violence now sparks the same debate: “Are they a terrorist or are they mentally ill?” In some cases, the answer is both, though Corner stresses that most terrorist attackers are not mentally ill, and most people with mental illness are not violent.

The Russell Square attack came within hours of an announcement by London police that they were putting more armed officers on the streets to bolster public confidence in the wake of recent attacks in Europe.