An 11-year-old girl was seriously injured in a stabbing in London's Leicester Square on Monday, police said in a statement, adding that a man had been arrested at the scene of the attack.
The police said they did not believe the stabbing was terror-related.
The girl's mother, 34, received minor injuries during the incident in the busy central London area which is popular with tourists. The child's injuries were not life threatening, police said.
A 32-year-old man was swiftly arrested and officers were not looking for anyone else in connection with the attack.
"An urgent investigation is now ongoing and detectives are working to establish the details around exactly what happened," the police said. "At this stage we don't believe the suspect and the victims were known to each other."
Britain's police forces remain on high alert after days of riots earlier this month, which were triggered by false online posts wrongly identifying the suspected killer of three girls in northern England as an extremist migrant.
