Several dead, wounded in knife attack at hospital in China

A knife attack at a hospital in southwestern China has killed two people and injured 21 others, authorities said.

No motive was given for the attack at Zhenxiong County People’s Hospital in Yunnan province on Tuesday.

The suspect is a male from a village in the same county and has been arrested, a Zhenxiong police statement said.

A witness told, an online outlet, that the suspect narrowly escaped the attack and that a doctor or doctors were among the injured.

Video from the witness showed people who were bleeding and had fallen to the ground, and one older person trying to help another, a Red Star social media post said.

Earlier media reports said 23 people had been injured, but the police statement said the total was 21. A video posted online by Guizhou Province Television showed a man being taken away by police.

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

Knife attacks have happened before in China, often at kindergartens.

A man with a knife killed six people and wounded one other last July at a kindergarten in southeastern China's Guangdong province.

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