Scottish police said officers shot dead a man after a suspected stabbing attack yesterday at a Glasgow hotel housing asylum seekers that left six others injured, including one of their colleagues.
Police Scotland said that the incident at the Park Inn hotel in the city’s centre was not being treated as a terrorist incident.
“The individual who was shot by armed police has died,” assistant chief constable Steve Johnson said, adding that the situation was “contained” and there was no risk to the general public.
He said that the wounded 42-year-old police officer was in a critical but stable condition, but gave no details on how he or the other victims were injured.
The five other victims are all men, aged 17, 18, 20, 38 and 53, the police said, without revealing their condition.
Police were called to the hotel at about 1pm (1300GMT) and the surrounding area was cordoned off.
One man who said he lived on the hotel’s third floor told Sky News television he heard a man shouting for help and a woman screaming.
He went to investigate and found the lift was “covered in blood” then saw two people “gasping for air” after being stabbed.
The hotel was being used to house asylum seekers during the coronavirus outbreak, homelessness and human rights charity Positive Action in Housing tweeted.
The Kurdish Scottish Association was quoted as saying by the Glasgow Times newspaper there were about 100 asylum seekers in the hotel at the time.
Residents had complained about being kept inside and a lack of money, while some had mental health problems, it said, calling the situation “shocking”.
Positive Action in Housing has previously voiced concerns about single men, women, families and pregnant women — many of them vulnerable — being “dumped” into hotels.
Britain’s interior ministry has been using empty hotels across the country to house asylum seekers and refugees during the global pandemic.
Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said the events were “truly dreadful”, and praised emergency services who ensured “a very, very serious incident didn’t become much worse”.
Interior Minister Priti Patel said it was “deeply alarming” while Prime Minister Boris Johnson said he was “deeply saddened by the terrible incident”.
“My thoughts are with all the victims and their families,” he tweeted.
The incident comes less than a week after three people were stabbed to death in a park in Reading, southeast England, that police were treating as terror-related.
A 25-year-old man widely said to be a Libyan asylum seeker was arrested in connection with the random stabbing that killed three friends.
Videos shared on social media showed armed police in plain clothes on West George Street, where the hotel is located.
Television footage also appeared to show several people being frogmarched out of the hotel, with their hands above their heads.
A witness quoted by the domestic Press Association news agency said he saw one man lying on the ground without shoes, and someone holding his side.
“I don’t know if it was a bullet wound, a stab wound, or what it was,” said Craig Milroy, who works in an office nearby.
Police and emergency services respond at the scene of a fatal stabbing incident at the Park Inn Hotel in central Glasgow yesterday.
