6 dead, 1 arrested in knife attack on British isle

LONDON (AP) -- A man was arrested Sunday on suspicion of fatally stabbing six people, including two young children, on the British island of Jersey, police said.

Neighbors said the mass killing, inside an apartment in the capital of St. Helier, involved members of the same family.

The victims, all Jersey residents, were two men, two women and two young children, police said. The 30-year-old murder suspect also sustained unspecified injuries that were not life-threatening.

Some neighbors said they thought at least some of the victims were Polish. One witness, Andre Thorpe, said he saw police running around the property trying to gain access, then paramedics carrying a bloodied child from the scene.

British forensic police attend the scene after six people were killed in a knife attack, Sunday, in St Helier, Jersey, England. A man is reported to have been arrested Sunday on suspicion of fatally stabbing six people, including two young children, two men and two women, on the British island of Jersey, police said, and unidentified neighbors declared that the incident may have involved members of the same family. (AP- Yonhap News)

Det. Supt. Stewart Gull, who is leading the investigation, said his officers had yet to establish the victims' ages and the circumstances of the attack. He said the crime had shocked everyone.

``It goes without saying that when you are dealing with multiple deaths, of men and women and, in particular young children, you would be inhuman not to be shaken yourself,'' he said.

Violent crime is rare on Jersey, a British island dependency 14 miles (22 kilometers) off the west coast of France's Normandy peninsula. It is the largest of Britain's Channel Islands and has fewer than 100,000 residents, many of them tax exiles.

``Jersey is an incredibly safe island, probably one of the safest places in the Western world,'' Gull said.