Officers arrested one suspect, a 19-year-old Norwegian national, shortly after the attack.
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Police are still not ruling out terrorism as a possible motive, but said they haven’t found any links to support it.
Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said the suspect, whose name hasn’t been released, is a Norwegian of Somali ancestry – though police don’t consider that “relevant to the motivation for his actions”.
City police responded late Wednesday to reports of a man attacking people with a knife in Russell Square.
The female victim – who was in her 60s, police said – was treated at the scene but was pronounced dead a short time later.
Police used a Taser while detaining the 19-year-old suspect and he was later formally arrested on suspicion of murder.
The violence comes within hours of London police announcing a plan to put an additional 600 armed officers on patrol.
Police said mental health issues appeared to have been a factor. “This morning, we have searched an address in North London and will search another in South London”, Rowley told reporters.
The unnamed woman – an American national – died in the attack while four others including a British man, an American man, an Australian man, an Australian woman and an Israeli woman were injured and needed hospital treatment.
Ms Horton, 64, and her husband lived in Tallahassee, Florida.
However, in the wake of a string of recent attacks in Europe, the authorities said that “terrorism remains one line of inquiry being explored”.
The police said three of the five have been discharged while two remained in hospital with non-life threatening injuries suffered in what the police called a “random” attack.
The woman killed in a stabbing attack in London was a US citizen and one of the injured was an Israeli, police told reporters.
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The London Metropolitan Police chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe on Sunday warned a terror attack in Britain was a case of “when, not if”.
