BEIJING: A man slashed seven people on Thursday in the southern city of Guan­gzhou, state media said, in the latest of a series of attacks that has unnerved the country. The assailant, whose motive is unknown, was also injured, state news agency Xinhua said, quoting sources at the Guangzhou Armed Police Hospital, where the injured were receiving treatment.

Police are investigating the case, Xinhua said, without giving further details.

The attack comes three months after an assailant stabbed six people in a Guangzhou railway station.

A car burst into flames on the edge of Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in October in an apparently deliberate attack, and 29 people were stabbed to death in March in the southwestern city of Kunming.

The government blamed militants from the region of Xinjiang for both those attacks. Xinjiang, a resource-rich region on the borders of central Asia, has for years been beset by violence blamed by Beijing on Islamists.

In late July, three suspected Islamist militants armed with knives and axes killed the imam of China’s biggest mosque in Xinjiang, days after a knife-wielding gang attacked state buildings in the same region.

Published in Dawn, August 22nd, 2014