No motive was given for the stabbing, which Chinese state media outlet Xinhua described as a “violent incident” and said that authorities were gathering more information.

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

No motive was given for the stabbing, which occurred at 11:37 a.m. local time (03:37 GMT) at Zhenxiong County People’s Hospital.

Chinese state media outlet Xinhua described the attack as a “violent incident” and said that authorities were gathering more information.

A separate statement from Zhenxiong’s public security bureau said it had identified a male suspect from a town in the county. An investigation was on-going into the attack, the statement said, adding that the injured were being treated.

Images published by China's The Paper showed a man in black, wielding knives in both hands, inside the hospital.

“Multiple videos from the scene also show a suspect being apprehended by police in a [nearby] wellness centre,” Guizhou Television reported earlier in the day.

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

State media reports earlier said 23 people were injured, but the police statement said the total was 21.

A witness told online outlet Red Star News that he had 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, the Red Star social media post said.

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

Authorities have told residents and merchants in the neighbourhood to “lock their doors” and “avoid contact with unknown persons”, according to Chinese news outlet Hongxing News.

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

Last August, two people were killed and seven others injured when a man with a history of mental illness attacked people with a knife in a residential district in also Yunnan.

In July that year, six people including three children were killed and one other injured in an early morning stabbing outside a kindergarten in the southeastern province of Guangdong.

A 2022 stabbing, also at a kindergarten, killed three and injured six others in eastern Jiangxi province, while a 2020 knife attack at an elementary school injured 37 children and two adults in the southern Guangxi region.

Violence at hospitals is also not unheard of in China, where health professionals have a history of facing assault from patients or their families, often over concerns about high costs and standard of treatment.