UPDATED at 3:00 p.m. ET on June 25, 2024.
Chinese police have detained a man accused of stabbing three people, including a Japanese mother and her young child, who were waiting for a bus used by a local Japanese school, local authorities said.
An “unemployed man in his 50s” was arrested after attacking the mother, her preschooler and a Chinese woman in the city of Suzhou, which is near Shanghai, according to the Suzhou Public Security Bureau.
The Chinese woman was the most critically injured in the knife attack, Reuters reported, and had to be hospitalized. The Japanese mother and her child did not receive life-threatening injuries, the report said.
At a press briefing Tuesday, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning called the attack “regrettable” but an “isolated incident.”
“Such isolated incidents could happen in any country in the world,” she said. “China will continue to take effective measures to protect the safety of all foreign nationals in China like protecting our own citizens.”
The attack was the latest in a string of knife attacks in China.
Earlier this month, four American teachers were stabbed in a park in the northeastern city of Jilin. Last month, a knife attack at a hospital in Yunnan province left two people dead and 21 people injured.
The Japanese Embassy in Beijing warned Japanese nationals living in China to take precautions against stabbing incidents while in public places including schools and parks, the Associated Press reported.
Japanese schools in China had also requested extra security in the wake of Monday's stabbings, Japanese media outlet NHK said.
Updated to include information from local authorities.