A Syrian man stabbed and wounded his wife and another man in Numedal in southeast Norway on Friday, police said, adding that the attack was a domestic dispute and there was no danger to others.

The two victims and the attacker were all wounded in the attack, which had triggered a major response by emergency services fearing a larger incident, and one of the victims was in a critical condition, police said.

Officials initially said at least four people were injured in what had first appeared to be a random, ongoing attack.

Police said on Twitter that the incident in a small town west of Oslo was labeled as "ongoing, life-threatening violence."

The suspect was later apprehended, added officials.

"This is a family from Syria, and the perpetrator and one of the injured are married," police inspector Odd Skei Kostveit said in a statement.

Police said the suspect was a man who had received a restraining order in December following an investigation of domestic violence.

"Such acts of violence are serious and despairing," Norwegian Justice Minister Emilie Enger Mehl said in a statement.

Nore is close to Kongsberg, where five people were fatally stabbed and four wounded last October when Espen Andersen Brathen attacked strangers with a bow and arrows and knives. He has pleaded guilty in a trial that started this week. He also faces 11 counts of attempted murder for the attack in Kongsberg, a former mining town of 26,000 people.

Mass killings are rare in Norway. The country's worst peacetime slaughter was on July 22, 2011, when right-wing extremist Anders Breivik set off a bomb in the capital of Oslo, killing eight people.