China executes knife attack convict

By Saadet Gokce

ISTANBUL (AA) - China executed a knife attack convict who had fatally stabbed a bus attendant and wounded a Japanese mother and her child near Shanghai last year, a media report said on Thursday.

The convicted attacker, Zhou Jia Sheng, 52, "in debt and unwilling to live," attacked the victims on June 24 at a Japanese bus stop in Suzhou, a city in eastern Jiangsu province, and stabbed the bus attendant after she tried to intervene, according to Japan's Kyodo News.

Zhou, who was sentenced to death in January, was executed, the media outlet reported, citing a Japanese government source.

The Suzhou Intermediate People's Court, which issued the death sentence, made no mention of the Japanese nationals injured in the attack.

China has experienced several knife attacks in the past and has handed down death sentences.

Another knife attacker, Zhong Changchun, was sentenced to death in January for murdering a Japanese boy on his way to school in Southern China.

On November 11, a knife attack at a vocational school in Jiangsu killed eight people and injured 17 others.