BEIJING : A mentally ill man stabbed three passers-by to death in China’s southern boom town of Shenzhen on Monday, police said, the latest in a series of killing sprees in the country.
The man, identified only by his surname He, attacked several people on a street in the city bordering Hong Kong, police said on a verified Sina Weibo account, China’s equivalent of Twitter.
Three people were killed and five wounded, they said, adding that He had a history of mental illness and had rushed into a roadside restaurant, seized a knife and wounded the owner before attacking passers-by. The survivors were being treated in hospital. He, 41, was subdued by officers who arrived at the scene three minutes after the first reports were received. He was taken to hospital after cutting himself, police said.
The incident was the latest in a series of deadly incidents across China, where social tensions have risen in recent years against a backdrop of a widening income gap and abuses of public power.
Eleven nursing home patients burned to death early Friday in the northeast of the country after one of them set the facility on fire in a row over money, according to media reports.
A man knifed five people to death and wounded another three on Thursday in the central province of Henan over land and business disputes.
Also on Thursday, a two-year-old girl died after being thrown to the ground by a man in his 40s during a row with her mother over parking in Beijing.
Earlier last week, a man in the southern region of Guangxi stormed an office enforcing China’s one-child policy, stabbing two officials to death and wounding four after a row over his offspring.