Police in the United Kingdom have arrested two suspects after at least 10 were taken to hospital following a stabbing on a train near Cambridgeshire in eastern England.

The British Transport Police, in a statement on X early on Sunday, said at least nine of the victims “are believed to have suffered life-threatening injuries”.

It declared a “major incident” and said counter terrorism police were now supporting its investigation.

So far, two people have been arrested over the attack, it added.

The Cambridgeshire police issued a separate statement, saying they were called at 19:39 GMT on Saturday after reports that multiple people had been stabbed on a train.

“Armed officers attended and the train was stopped at Huntingdon, where two men were arrested,” the police said.

Earlier in the night, the East of England Ambulance Service said it mobilised a large-scale response to Huntingdon Railway Station, which included numerous ambulances and critical care teams, including three air ambulances.

“We can confirm we have transported multiple patients to hospital,” it said.

One witness described seeing a man with a large knife, and told The Times newspaper there was “blood everywhere” as people hid in the washrooms.

Some passengers were getting “stamped on by others” as they tried to run, and the witness told The Times that they “heard some people shouting we love you”.

Another witness told Sky News that one of the suspects was tasered by police.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer described the incident as “appalling” and said he was “deeply” concerned by it.

“My thoughts are with all those affected, and my thanks go to the emergency services for their response,” Starmer said in a statement on X.

“Anyone in the area should follow the advice of the police,” Starmer added.

London North Eastern Railway, or LNER, which operates the East Coast Mainline services in the UK, confirmed the incident had happened on one of its trains and said all its railway lines had been closed while emergency services dealt with the incident at Huntingdon station.

LNER, which runs trains along the east of England and Scotland, urged passengers not to travel, warning of “major disruption”.

The mayor of Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Paul Bristow said in a post on X that he was hearing about “reports of horrendous scenes on a train in Huntingdon”.

He added that his “thoughts are with everyone affected”.

Knife crime in England and Wales has been steadily rising since 2011, according to official government data.

While the UK has some of the strictest gun controls in the world, rampant knife crime has been branded a “national crisis” by Starmer.

His Labour government has tried to rein in their use.

Nearly 60,000 blades have been either “seized or surrendered” in England and Wales as part of government efforts to halve knife crime within a decade, the Home Office said on Wednesday.

Carrying a knife in public can already get you up to four years in prison, and the government said knife murders had dropped by 18 percent in the last year.

Two people were killed – one as a result of misdirected police gunfire – and others were wounded in a stabbing spree at a synagogue in Manchester at the start of October,  an attack that shook the local Jewish community and the country.

[Aljazeera]