A survivor of the Southport knife attack is calling for the use of blunt-tipped knives in home kitchens, in a campaign she says is “for the girls”.

In one of her first television interviews since the July 2024 attack, Leanne Lucas, 36, tells Sky News it was the “tip of the knife” that caused injuries that led to her “nearly dying”.

“I never, ever thought I’d be talking about things like this,” Ms Lucas tells Sky’s Katerina Vittozzi, “but since what happened in July, I really can’t sit still and not say how I feel”.

Ms Lucas was leading a group of children in a Taylor Swift-themed dance workshop when they came under attack by Axel Rudakubana, then aged 17.

“What happened before the incident was just pure joy,” Ms Lucas remembers.

“We were just having so much fun. And for that to be ruined and everyone’s life that was involved, to be shattered, is just not acceptable,” she says.

Bebe King, six, Elsie Dot Stancombe, seven, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, nine, were killed in the attack. Ten others, including Ms Lucas, were injured.

The attacker used a kitchen knife with a 20cm blade, purchased via the online retailer, Amazon.

“I don’t want this pain and this trauma that any of us have felt, I don’t want that to happen to another family,” Ms Lucas says.

Her new campaign, launched today, is called Let’s Be Blunt and aims to “raise social awareness” of safer-tipped knives.

“A safer option is to go for curved or blunt-tip knives… that reduces that risk of the kitchen knife being used ever as a weapon,” she says.

It’s an issue about which Ms Lucas feels “passionate”.

“[I] will not let evil win. I need to know that I’m doing this for the girls, for myself and for future generations,” she says.

“We don’t need to wait for government or the police to tell us what to do,” Ms Lucas adds, as she calls on the public to “do an inventory” of their kitchen knives.

Since the attack, Ms Lucas says she feels “like I’ve just had my eyes opened” to how “domestic tools can be weaponised”.

“I personally feel that knife crime has got out of control,” she adds.

According to the latest data from the Office for National Statistics, kitchen knives are the most common type of weapon used in knife homicides.

“You normally hear of the zombie knives, machetes, things like that,” Ms Lucas says.

“They sound dangerous but really, when you look at the figures, the highest figure is the domestic kitchen knife, which we have all got in our kitchen, which we use daily.”

Ms Lucas says “since the attack in the summer,” she has never “cooked with a pointed kitchen knife again” and that using a blunt-tipped knife makes her feel “safer”.

“Obviously, people can hurt people in many ways,” she says. “It’s about reducing that opportunity to cause life-damaging, life-threatening injuries that can take people’s lives.”

Reflecting on the personal nature of the campaign, Ms Lucas tells Sky News it was a “privilege” to be a survivor, but that she does not “want to be defined by what happened to us”.

“My work was for the girls,” she says. “My work was for the community… and just creating memories that will last a lifetime… and I don’t want this to be part of our memories.”

Ms Lucas says she hopes Let’s Be Blunt will “inspire” other Southport survivors.

“If I can show them that there’s hope and that real change came from what happened to us… If I can do that, then that’s what I’ll do.”

The foreign secretary has denounced Israel’s actions in Gaza as “intolerable” but stopped short of saying it had committed genocide.

MPs could be heard shouting “genocide” in the Commons chamber as David Lammy announced the government was suspending its trade negotiations with Israel and summoning Tzipi Hotovely, Israel’s ambassador to the UK, to the Foreign Office.

The UK has also sanctioned a number of individuals and groups in the West Bank which it says have been linked with acts of violence against Palestinians – including Daniella Weiss, a leading settler activist who was the subject of Louis Theroux’s recent documentary The Settlers.

Politics latest: Starmer says sorry for being ‘overly rude’ at PMQs

Israel immediately criticised the UK government actions as “regrettable” and said the free trade agreement talks, which ministers have now backed out of, were “not being advanced at all by the UK government”.

Oren Marmorstein, a spokesperson for the Israeli foreign affairs ministry, said: “If, due to anti-Israel obsession and domestic political considerations, the British government is willing to harm the British economy – that is its own prerogative.”

Mr Lammy’s intervention came in response to Israel ramping up its latest military offensive in Gaza and its decision to limit the amount of aid into the enclave.

Tom Fletcher, head of the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, accused Israel of “deliberately and unashamedly” imposing inhumane conditions on Palestinians by blocking aid from entering Gaza more than 10 weeks ago.

He also told the UN’s security council last week that it must “act now” to “prevent genocide” – a claim that Israel has vehemently denied.

Speaking in the Commons, the foreign secretary said the threat of starvation was “hanging over hundreds of thousands of civilians” and that the 11-week blockade stopping humanitarian aid reaching Gaza was “indefensible and cruel”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to allow a limited amount of aid into the besieged enclave in response to global concern at reports of famine.

Mr Lammy said Mr Netanyahu’s govenrment was “isolating Israel from its friends and partners around the world, undermining the interests of the Israeli people and damaging the image of the state of Israel in the eyes of the world”.

“We are now entering a dark new phase in this conflict,” Mr Lammy added.

“Netanyahu’s government is planning to drive Gazans from their homes into a corner of the strip to the south and permit them a fraction of the aid that they need.”

Referring to one of the far-right ministers in Mr Netanyahu’s government, he said Bezalel Smotrich “even spoke of Israeli forces cleansing Gaza, destroying what’s left of residents, Palestinians being relocated, he said, to third countries”.

MPs from across the house shouted “genocide” as Mr Lammy said: “We must call this what it is. It is extremism. It is dangerous. It is repellent. It is monstrous and I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.”

In the Commons, a number of Labour MPs urged the government to go further against Israel.

Yasmin Qureshi, the Labour MP for Bolton South and Walkden, said there needed to be a “full arms embargo” and said: “Can I ask the foreign secretary what additional steps he’s going to be taking in order to stave off this genocide?”

Another Labour MP told Sky News that while the statement was “better than previously…without a concrete timeline and a sanctioning of responsible ministers, it’s hard to know what tangible difference it will make.”

Read more:
British surgeon in Gaza says it is now ‘a slaughterhouse’
Gaza at mercy of what comes next – analysis
How Israel has escalated Gaza bombing campaign

Follow The World

Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday

Tap to follow

Israeli officials have said its plans to seize all of Gaza and hold it indefinitely. – which would move the civilian population southward – will help it achieve its aim of defeating Hamas.

Israel also believes the offensive will prevent Hamas from looting and distributing humanitarian aid, which it says strengthens the group’s rule in Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu has defended Israel’s actions in Gaza and reacted angrily to a joint statement penned by the leaders of the UK, France and Canada, in which they urged Israel to end its military offensive in Gaza and lift restrictions on humanitarian aid allowed into the enclave.

The Israeli prime minister said: “By asking Israel to end a defensive war for our survival before Hamas terrorists on our border are destroyed and by demanding a Palestinian state, the leaders in London, Ottawa and Paris are offering a huge prize for the genocidal attack on Israel on October 7 while inviting more such atrocities.

“No nation can be expected to accept anything less and Israel certainly won’t. This is a war of civilisation over barbarism. Israel will continue to defend itself by just means until total victory is achieved.”

A British doctor working in Gaza has urged world leaders to “stop talking and do something” as he described how people are starving and the “massive extent of destruction”.

Dr Tom Potokar – who has compared Gaza to a “slaugherhouse” because of the bombardment by Israeli forces – is part of a group of British specialist doctors and surgeons currently working in Khan Younis.

Gaza latest: UK halts trade talks with Israel

Sky News spent two days filming with them in Nasser and Amal hospitals – two of the last functioning hospitals in southern Gaza.

They are plastic surgeons and orthopaedic specialists. The operating theatres are a rare zone of calm as the medics work with the war outside and a constant stream of wounded needing urgent treatment.

All the patients are malnourished. Children are suffering the worst. The lack of food and water has made them weak and more vulnerable to their injuries.

Hospitals in Gaza have repeatedly come under attack during the war. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) claims Hamas has been hiding in them or in tunnels underneath.

Nasser hospital hasn’t escaped. The burns unit was one of the busiest parts of the hospital, until it was destroyed in an airstrike.

The doctors sleep and spend downtime in small living quarters within the hospital itself. Food is one ready meal a day, only 400 calories. The 11-week blockade is affecting everyone.

Dr Potokar was working in the European hospital on the western edge of Khan Younis but had to evacuate last week when it came under missile fire and had to close.

He went to Amal hospital next to Nasser and is working again.

He says he’s seen a dramatic change since he was last in Gaza shortly after the Hamas attack on 7 October 2023.

“The difference this time I think is the intensity,” he says.

“Back in October to December ’23 was the last time I was here, there was a lot of wounded, and it was very intense as well.

“I think the difference this time is because of the blockade there’s so little stuff getting in, there’s no food getting in so people are starving, there’s very little medical supplies coming in but also the other very noticeable thing is the massive extent of destruction – I mean Khan Younis looks like Stalingrad.”

Speaking about what he has witnessed in Gaza, Dr Potokar added: “What can you say, it’s horrific, it’s a slaughterhouse. That’s what it is, it’s a slaughterhouse.”

He also urged world leaders to “stop talking and do something”.

Read more:
What aid has entered Gaza and where is it going?
Dad wrongly pronounced dead in 2014 is killed in airstrike

The United Nations says 100 aid trucks were cleared for entry into Gaza on Tuesday, but Tom Fletcher, a former British diplomat who now heads the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, warned that 14,000 babies could die in the next 48 hours if they don’t receive urgent aid.

On Monday evening, the IDF-declared combat zone was only a few streets from the Nasser hospital. Drones flew low overhead through the day.

“An evacuation order for most of Khan Younis went out today, which meant we lost several members of the team,” said Dr Victoria Rose, a plastic surgeon.

“My anaesthetic nurse and Graeme’s orthopaedic colleague had to leave us mid-case to go and evacuate their families to an area of safety.”

Dr Graeme Groom added: “These are people just like you and me, they have their homes, their families, they live normal lives, many are very impressive people and without notice they have to pick up a grab bag and leave… look for food, look for water, look for shelter, but turn up at work each day.”

With the Israeli military operation getting closer, the doctors are also prepared to evacuate at short notice.

Essential supplies have been gathered and packed ready in a storeroom.

But Nasser hospital has the last remaining ICU department in the whole of southern Gaza – one of only two with a working oxygen supply. If it must be evacuated, then the remaining temporary field hospitals would likely be overwhelmed and unable to cope.