BEIJING (AP) — Chinese police shot and wounded a suspect who attacked passengers at a busy railway station in southern China on Tuesday, leaving six people injured in the third high-profile assault on civilians at a train station in a little more than two months.
There was no immediate word on a motive for the violence in the Guangdong provincial capital of Guangzhou.
The attack came despite heightened security countrywide in the wake of two deadly attacks at train stations blamed on extremists from far-western China. The country also has seen mass stabbings carried out by people with grudges against society or who were deemed mentally ill.
The latest incident happened late in the morning at the Guangzhou Railway Station, city police said on their microblog. Officers arrived as passengers were being hacked, and shot and subdued a male suspect with a knife after he failed to respond to a police warning, the statement said.
Following initial confusion about the number of attackers, police said there was only one perpetrator. It said the person was receiving treatment in a hospital, but gave no further details.
Police said six people were injured and taken to a hospital, not including the suspect.
Last week, a suicide bombing at a train station in the far-western region of Xinjiang — where extremists among the Turkic Uighur Muslim population have been waging a simmering insurgency against Beijing for years — left three people dead and 79 injured, prompting Chinese President Xi Jinping to demand “decisive actions” against terrorism.
In March, five knife-wielding men and women believed to be Uighurs slashed at crowds at a railway station in Kunming city in southwestern China, killing 29 people. Four attackers were killed by police.
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