BEIJING: Two people were killed after a knife attack at a hospital in southwest China on Tuesday (May 7), according to local authorities.
Twenty-one people were also injured after the attack at the hospital in Zhenxiong County in southwestern Yunnan province, said Zhenxiong County police in a statement posted on its official WeChat account.
“According to investigations, the suspect is a male villager from Zhenxiong County’s Poji Town.”
The injured are currently receiving treatment and investigations are ongoing, said the local police.
Images published by the state-run news site The Paper appeared to show a man pointing a knife at another man wielding a stick in a hospital lobby, as well as police officers arriving at the scene.
“It happened around 11 in the morning … it’s still a bit chaotic, they’re still determining the numbers,” a local resident told The Paper.
Mass violent crime is rare in China, which strictly prohibits citizens from owning firearms, but there has been a spate of stabbings in recent years.
Last August in Yunnan, two people died and seven others were wounded after a man with a history of mental illness attacked people with a knife.
The month before that, six people were killed and one wounded in a kindergarten stabbing in southern China’s Guangdong province.
And in August 2022, three people were killed and six wounded in a knife attack at a kindergarten in southeast China’s Jiangxi province.
