The assailant, believed to be 29, was subdued with a stun gun and arrested, London’s Metropolitan Police said.
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“We are treating this as a terrorist incident”, Richard Walton, who leads the London police’s Counter Terrorism Command, said in a statement.
Britain’s national terrorism threat level remains at “severe”, meaning that authorities believe an attack is highly likely.
A bystander can be heard shouting “You ain’t no Muslim bruv” to the man being detained, and the phrase has since been coined as a trending hashtag by social media users who have condemned the attack.
Dijeh, the Metropolitan Police spokeswoman, said no charges have been filed. Two others suffered minor injuries in the attack Saturday night.
Last month, Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC that the country’s security officials foiled seven terrorist attacks in the last six months.
Police have not confirmed the attack is linked to Syria.
“We sent a number of resources to the including our joint response unit, an incident response officer, an ambulance crew and London’s Air Ambulance to the scene”.
The attack Saturday came at the end of a week in which the British parliament voted to extend air strikes on the Islamic State jihadist group (IS) from Iraq into Syria.
Detectives are searching a residential address in east London after the “violent unprovoked knife attack”, which is being treated as a “terrorist incident”.
Video shot by witnesses at the scene showed a pool of blood on the station’s floor as the suspect was seen lunging at several police officers who tried to subdue him.
Police had been dispatched to the station after receiving emergency calls reporting that a man had stabbed people and was threatening others, police said.
As the officers clamber on top of him, one onlooker shouts out “You are no Muslim”.
One person, who claims to have witnessed the attack, took to Twitter.
“He was kicking him so many times with [his] right leg and after a while he took his knife out and used it on his body”, said Patel.
Fahmida Faiza, 21, who works in a coffee shop next to the station, said: “I was here closing up the shop when it happened”.
“I just hear the screaming and shouting and I thought, usually drunken people do that, but the victim was shouting “Somebody help, somebody help”, Salim said.
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Hours later, the Leytonstone station was still roped off with blue and white police tape, and police officers were standing guard outside.
