Chinese woman dies after stabbing near Shanghai that injured Japanese

SHANGHAI (Kyodo) -- A Chinese woman has died after sustaining severe injuries earlier this week while trying to stop a knife attack at a bus stop in Suzhou near Shanghai, which also wounded a Japanese mother and a son, local authorities said Thursday.

Hu Youping 54, a Suzhou resident who worked as a Japanese school bus attendant, died in a hospital Wednesday, two days after the stabbing incident. The city in Jiangsu Province, home to many Japanese nationals and production facilities, will posthumously honor her for heroism, the official Xinhua News Agency said.

The injuries of the Japanese woman in her 30s and her son of preschool age, who had been waiting for another child to return from the school at the time, are not life-threatening, according to Xinhua and an official of the Japanese Consulate General in Shanghai.

The consulate general and Japan's embassy in Beijing flew their flags at half-mast Friday to mourn Hu. The embassy posted on Weibo, China's equivalent of the social media platform X, that it is "deeply saddened" to hear of her death and paid tribute to her "righteous act."

Hu attempted to restrain the assailant, allowing the Japanese boy to escape. The attacker then turned to Hu, stabbing her before being subdued by passersby and police, Xinhua said.

"If she hadn't tried to hold back the assailant, there could have been more victims," the news agency quoted an eyewitness as saying.

There was no indication that the suspect, a 52-year-old unemployed man who had recently moved to Suzhou, intentionally targeted Japanese nationals, the consulate general official said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Mao Ning on Tuesday called it an "isolated incident" that could happen in any country and pledged that Beijing will