8 injured in Minnesota stabbing, suspect shot dead

A man making “some references to Allah” stabbed and injured eight people in a shopping mall in the US state of Minnesota, before being shot dead by an off-duty officer, police said.

The suspect “asked at least one person if they were Muslim before he assaulted them,” Blair Anderson, the police chief in the city of St Cloud where the attack took place, told journalists.

But he emphasized that the assailant’s motivation remained unclear and said “whether that was a terrorist attack or not, I’m not willing to say that right now because we just don’t know.”  The attack came as 29 people were injured in a deliberate explosion in a busy New York neighborhood Saturday. Mayor Bill de Blasio said there was no known link to terror at this stage.

Anderson said the armed suspect entered the Crossroads Center mall in St. Cloud  - a city of about 67,000 people some 110 km northwest of Minneapolis - and attacked at least eight people. The lone suspect was wearing a private security uniform and had at least one knife, and “made some references to Allah,” the police chief said. “That suspect was confronted by an off-duty police officer and summarily shot and killed,” he added. 

Anderson said the eight people injured were taken to a hospital. The suspect had a history of minor traffic violations, and police do not have reason to believe the attack was connected to any other incident.