A wounded teenager staggered into a Stoke Newington bagel shop and collapsed after being stabbed “six or seven times in the back” this afternoon.

The boy was found injured at 12.30pm in The Bagel House opposite Stoke Newington police station – but police do not believe the attack itself took place there.

Manager Perent Lamce described how the boy had asked his staff for hot water before collapsing on the floor.

He said: “They thought he was drunk but afterwards they realised. The police came within a minute.

“It’s horrible to see. It was shocking for my staff. His clothes are still there in the shop.

“It’s terrible that they have to grow up stabbing and killing each other.”

Three people have been arrested – two on suspicion of affray and one on suspicion of affray and possession of a knife.

Gang police have been “informed”, a Scotland Yard spokesman added.

A man who works nearby told the Gazette: “I saw pedestrians grouped outside so I went and looked.

“I saw the boy on the floor of the bagel shop.

“He was lying face first on the floor, so I think he must have been stabbed in his bottom area.

“Living in this area you get used to it. You see it on the news every day that some other person is getting stabbed so it’s not that shocking.

“It just happens and then someone else will retaliate. It’s ‘seen it before, heard it before’.”

London Ambulance Service said in a statement: “The first of our medics arrived at the scene in under four minutes.

“We treated a man at the scene and took him as a priority to a major trauma centre in east London.”

Anyone with information is asked to call police 101.

To give information anonymously contact Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111 or visit crimestoppers-uk.org.