A 57-year-old man attacked passengers on a moving bus in Hong Kong with a meat cleaver today, injuring eleven, before he was finally brought down by his victims, police said.
The rare and bloody assault, in a city which is usually considered one of the safest in the world, resulted in 11 people being hospitalised with one victim losing her little finger.
The attack occurred at around 7:30 am local time on a highway in the rural Tuen Mun district of the city, on board a coach hired by a local fruit company to ferry employees to work.
"The man suddenly attacked a few of the female colleagues and a male colleague who were sitting on the back rows of the bus a few minutes after it set off," police inspector Kelvin Ip told reporters.
"We found a cleaver, which we suspect to have been used to attack the people, at the scene," Ip told reporters, adding there was blood on the knife.
Other passengers on the bus eventually subdued the attacker who was also injured before being later arrested, he said. Of the 26 people on board the bus, ten females and one male were injured in the attack.
Police added that the attacker had no previous record of mental illness.
Local news images showed distraught survivors sitting by the side of the road with the suspect hooded and hand-cuffed inside the bus wearing a blood-splattered t-shirt and khaki pants.
A blood-stained meat cleaver was also shown lying in the road.
"I thought he was using newspapers to hit people on the head but it was actually a knife. He was slashing at heads, backs, slashing everywhere," one female passenger, choking back tears, said in a video posted on the Chinese-language Apple Daily newspaper website.
News footage from Cable Television showed a sign that said "Fresh-Cut Produces Ltd." on the front window of the bus and victims wearing arm and leg bandages being taken to hospital on stretchers.
The southern Chinese city of seven million population has a relatively low crime rate, where violent crimes make up a small proportion.
Around 13,000 out of 76,000 crimes reported last year were violent crimes, including 27 homicides.
