There’s been a horrific series of random stabbing attacks that have occurred today in the Arndale shopping centre in Manchester. According to various reports in the press, a man or men ran around the centre stabbing random people. Police have converged on the centre and have evacuated as many people as they could although some are apparently locked in their offices away from the trouble.

Four people have been stabbed by the man or men but police are not saying at the time of writing if there are any fatalities. One person is in custody and has been arrested for serious assault after the attacker was tasered by police. Owing to the nature of the environment which this attack took place and the nature of the attack itself, North West Counterterror command have been brought into the investigation.

This series of attacks may well be the work of a lone and deranged individual with no motivation from Islam, but the fact that Counterterror officers are now leading the investigation and a statement by the police that whether this is a terror attack hinges on what this attacker or attackers said during the incident. In other words, the police want to know if the Islamic war cry of ‘allah hu akbar’ was shouted during the attack.

I must admit that there are aspects of this case that tend to make me think that these attacks may well be jihad or at least terror related. The first is the environment that this incident occurred, a busy shopping centre. The second is the allegedly random nature of those targeted and the sorts of places, such as Starbucks where the attacks took place. This certainly does not look to me like some sort of targetted gang attack which leaves the possibility that we are dealing with a terror attack or a mentally ill individual.

Another indication that this could be a terror attack is an action taken by one of Britain’s Islamic apologist groups, Tell Mama. They are playing the ‘wait and see’ card and telling the readers of their Twitter account not to jump to conclusions, to wait for the police’s statement and to not share gossip about the incident.

I’ve seen them do this before and as TM are very closely linked with many police forces, including Greater Manchester, I would not be surprised if this was a tactical bit of advice in order to get people to not talk about the possibility that this is a jihad attack. Greater Manchester council is also getting into the ‘don’t speculate’ game which could indicate that the authorities may suspect terrorism at this stage but don’t want any suspicions on the part of the public that this is terrorism to be distributed.

This is a developing story and of course we do not have all the information needed to confirm that this is a Jihad or other type of terror attack. But, the massive police and other emergency service presence seems much more intense than would be rolled out for just a random nutcase who’s having a violent episode.