A man stabbed two people to death Friday and injured half a dozen others in Turku, in western Finland, before he was shot and apprehended, the police there said.

The authorities emphasized that the attack was not being treated as a terrorist act, but they did not offer any other information about the assailant’s motives. The suspect, who was not identified, was hospitalized with a gunshot wound to one of his legs.

The police urged people to avoid the city center while they continued their investigation.

“We are not looking for other perpetrators at the moment, but we are looking into who might have helped him,” Markus Laine of the National Bureau of Investigation said. “We cannot rule out that others might have assisted him. We cannot say for sure if he is a Finnish citizen or a foreigner yet, but we are following several leads regarding his identity.”

Security was tightened at the airport and at train stations in the capital, Helsinki, about 100 miles to the east.