Fight between two market traders leaves six dead in China
A fight between two food stall owners at a market in southern China left five people dead and a sixth fatally shot by police, authorities said.
A man named Hebir Turdi slashed and killed another man, Memet Abla, at the market in Changsha, the official Xinhua News Agency said. As he ran away, Turdi stabbed four more people before he was shot dead by police, it said.
Two of the four people died at the scene and the two others died in hospital, police said in a statement.
The killings came two weeks after 29 people were killed and 140 others wounded in a knife attack blamed on ethnic Muslim Uighur separatists at the Kunming train station, initially raising concerns that the latest violence was politically motivated.
But unlike the Kunming attack, today’s violence appeared to stem from a personal dispute.
But the violence in Changsha had people on edge even in Chengdu, a city 750 miles west of it, where dozens of shoppers at a busy mall fled in panic because of false rumours of a knifing spree that were circulating online, Chengdu police said.
“Because of the incident that happened in Changsha, people started to panic and ran. But actually, nothing happened,” a Chengdu police official said.
