SYDNEY (Reuters) – Australian police said on Sunday they shot dead a boy after he stabbed a man in Western Australia’s capital Perth, in an attack authorities said indicated terrorism.
There were signs the 16-year-old, armed with a kitchen knife, had been radicalised online, state authorities said, adding they received calls from concerned members of the local Muslim community before the attack, which occurred late on Saturday night.
The attack, in the suburb of Willetton, had “hallmarks” of terrorism but was yet to be declared a terrorist act, police said.
“At this stage it appears that he acted solely and alone,” Western Australia Premier Roger Cook said in a televised news conference in Perth, regarding the attacker.
The victim, stabbed in the back, was stable in hospital, authorities said.
The incident comes after New South Wales police last month charged several boys with terrorism-related offences in investigations following the stabbing of an Assyrian Christian bishop while he was giving a live-streamed sermon in Sydney, on April 15.
The attack on the bishop came only days after a deadly mass stabbing in the Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi that claimed the lives of six people.
Gun and knife crime is rare in Australia, which consistently ranks among the safest countries in the world, according to the federal government.
(Reporting by Sam McKeith in Sydney; Editing by Christian Schmollinger)
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