Police on Tuesday said that three people died and 15 others were injured in a knife attack on Monday at a supermarket in Shanghai.
The injured were immediately rushed to a nearby hospital for medical treatment however, despite the efforts, three of the victims succumbed to their injuries, the state-run Xinhua news agency reported.
The police received a report of the attack and promptly detained the assailant, identified as a 37-year-old man surnamed Lin, Xinhua reported.Authorities are currently conducting an investigation into the incident.
Earlier in September, a Japanese student, aged 10, was fatally stabbed by an attacker just meters away from his school in Shenzhen, a city in southern China.
This incident, along with another knife attack on two Japanese nationals in Suzhou, a prominent city in eastern China, in June, has heightened security concerns among the Japanese community living in China.
While stabbing incidents are not common in Shanghai, they are not unprecedented.
In the year 2022, a man carried out a stabbing spree at a major hospital in the Chinese financial hub, injuring 15 people. The authorities said the man was “resentful of society” after an investment fell through, was sentenced to death a year later.
In recent years, China has witnessed an increase in public stabbing incidents, with authorities frequently attributing the cause to mental illness. Children at schools are often targeted in these attacks.