The fatal stabbing of British MP David Amess was a terrorist incident, police said Saturday, at they investigated the second killing of a UK politician while meeting voters since 2016.
The Metropolitan Police said its preliminary findings had revealed "a potential motivation linked to Islamist extremism".
Amess, a 69-year-old pro-Brexit Conservative lawmaker, was stabbed to death inside a church on Friday while holding a fortnightly consultation with his constituents in the small town of Leigh-on-Sea, in Essex, east of London.
Police arrested a 25-year-old man at the scene on suspicion of murder and recovered a knife.
Essex police said officers had responded "within minutes" to reports of the stabbing shortly after 12:05 pm (1105 GMT) and arrived to find Amess had "suffered multiple injuries".
"This was a difficult incident, but our officers and paramedics from the East of England Ambulance Service worked extremely hard to save Sir David," Harrington said.
"Tragically he died at the scene."
A father-of-five who was first elected to parliament in 1983, Amess was memorialised with an impromptu evening mass while tributes poured in from across the political spectrum and around the world.
Multiple UK media outlets, citing sources, reported that the suspect was believed to be a British national with Somali heritage.
“The investigation is in its very early stages and is being led by officers from the specialist counter-terrorism command," Ben-Julian Harrington, Essex police's chief constable, told reporters.
“We made it clear at the time of the incident that we did not believe there was any immediate further threat to anyone else in the area," Harrington said.