LONDON: Britain was last night reacting with horror over a wave of deadly stabbings that claimed seven lives in 24 hours.The number of fatal stabbings in London itself has risen to more than 50 this year, with four deaths yesterday, but police said the city was not suffering an epidemic of knife crime.

Mayor Boris John-son said he was appalled by the stabbings and the whole of society needed to take responsibility for tackling knife crime.

Before the latest four slayings, 49 people had died of knife wounds this year in London, a spate of violence that has alarmed politicians and the news media.

Violence in the British capital has become an international issue after the frenzied stabbings of two French students in London last week, an incident police said was one of the grisliest cases they had seen.

Police say tackling knife crime has overtaken terrorism as their number one priority. They have set up a 75-strong team to target those carrying weapons.

"There is an issue with knives and that is why we have launched Operation Blunt 2," a spokesman added, referring to a six-week campaign in which officers have searched 27,000 people, arrested more than 1,200 and seized 500 knives in London.

Sir Ian Blair, head of London's Metropolitan Police Service, said detectives had made arrests in three of the four latest murders.

Authorities have warn-ed teenagers that carrying a knife makes them more at risk, not safer, because of the danger the weapon will be used against them.

But the large number of teenage stab victims in London this year has captured the public imagination, as did the particularly vicious slaying of the French students.

In a case described by officers as one of the most brutal they have seen, French bio-engineering students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were bound, gagged and repeatedly stabbed in Bonomo's south London apartment last week.

Bonomo was stabbed nearly 200 times, with up to 80 of the wounds inflicted after he was dead. Ferez had nearly 50 knife wounds.