Yunnan, China: Two dead and 21 injured in knife attack at hospital in Zhenxiong County

CNN
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At least two people were killed and another 21 injured in a knife attack at a hospital in China’s southwestern Yunnan province on Tuesday, local authorities said.

The attack, which Chinese state media Xinhua described as a “violent incident,” occurred at a local hospital in Zhenxiong county, the news agency reported, adding that authorities were gathering more information.

A separate statement from the county public safety bureau said it had identified a male suspect from a town in the county. An investigation into the attack, which occurred just before noon at Chengnan Hospital, is underway, the statement said.

“Several videos from the crime scene also show a suspect being arrested by police at a (nearby) wellness center,” Guizhou Television reported earlier in the day.

Officials have not yet confirmed whether the arrested suspect is the attacker.

An eyewitness interviewed by Chinese state media outlet The Paper said the situation remained chaotic as authorities worked to assess the situation.

China, where private gun ownership is illegal for most civilians, has seen a spate of mass stabbings in public places in recent years.

Last year, six people were killed and one injured in an early morning knife attack outside a kindergarten in Guangdong, southern China. A 2020 knife attack at a primary school in the southern Guangxi region injured 37 children and two adults, while a 2022 knife attack, also at a kindergarten, left three people dead and six injured in the eastern Jiangxi province.

Yunnan was also the scene of a knife attack at a train station in the provincial capital Kunming in 2014, in which multiple attackers killed 33 people and injured 133. Authorities blamed terrorists from the northwestern Xinjiang region for the attack.

Violence in hospitals is also not uncommon in China, where healthcare professionals have faced attacks from patients or their families in the past, often over concerns about high costs and standards of care.