HONG KONG, March 18: Police said they arrested a Pakistani man on Tuesday in connection with the murders of four Hong Kong sex workers.

Four women have been found murdered in the southern Chinese city since Saturday, prompting fears that a serial killer was targeting prostitutes.

The suspect, who was not identified, was detained in the gambling hub of Macau, 40 kilometres west of Hong Kong, and sent back by ferry to Hong Kong, where he was arrested, police said.

Superintendent Steve Li said Macau police and the Hong Kong Organised Crime and Triad Bureau were involved in the case.

“At the time of the arrest we were able to recover two mobile phones which had been stolen from two of the victims,” Mr Li said on local radio RTHK.

“At the moment the arrested person is being detained for further enquiries. We believe that at some point later we will be issuing criminal proceedings.”

Mr Li said it appeared that robbery was the motive behind the murders of the four women.

“We do not want to guess, but based on the information so far we gathered, and also the ransacking and the looting of properties, we believe there’s one possibility of robbery,” he said.

Hong Kong is one of the world’s safest major cities, and murders and other violent crimes are rare. The four murders brought the total for the year to 14, according to the South China Morning Post.

About 30 representatives of sex workers’ groups staged a sit-in outside police headquarters demanding to meet Commissioner Tang King-Shing over the murders, accusing police of not taking their concerns seriously, RTHK said.

One of the protest organisers told the radio station they were still worried that there could be more attacks despite the arrest of a suspect.—AFP