Two people are killed and 21 injured in a knife attack at a Chinese hospital. The motive is unclear

BEIJING – Two people were killed and 21 others injured in a knife attack at a hospital in southwest China on Tuesday, authorities said.

No motive was given for the attack on the Zhenxiong County People’s Hospital in Yunnan Province. The suspect is a man from a village in the same county, a statement from Zhenxiong police said. The injured were being treated, it was said.

A witness told Red Star News, an online portal, that he narrowly escaped the attack and that one or more doctors were among the injured. The witness’s video showed people bleeding and falling to the ground and an elderly person trying to help another, Red Star’s social media post said.

Previous media reports said 23 people were injured, but the police statement said the total was 21. A video posted online by Guizhou provincial television showed a man being taken away by police.

Zhenxiong County is located 360 kilometers (220 miles) northeast of the Yunnan provincial capital, Kunming, and near the border with Sichuan Province.

Knife attacks have occurred in China before, often in kindergartens. Last July, a man with a knife killed six people and injured another in a kindergarten in Guangdong province in the southeast of the country.

A man injured 15 people, six of them seriously, in a knife attack at a hospital in Shanghai in 2022. He was sentenced to death last year.