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Eight people hurt in supermarket stabbing in South Korea’s Incheon, police say

Eight people were wounded in a stabbing at a supermarket in the South Korean city of Incheon on Tuesday, with one person suffering cardiac arrest, police said.

Reuters
Police officers and firefighters are mobilized at a commercial building housing an outlet of discount store chain Homeplus Co. after a stabbing incident in Incheon, west of Seoul, South Korea, 13 October 2026. Eight customers, including one in cardiac arrest, were injured in the stabbing incident, with the attacker arrested at the scene. EPA/YONHAP SOUTH KOREA OUT

Police officers and firefighters are mobilized at a commercial building housing an outlet of discount store chain Homeplus Co. after a stabbing incident in Incheon, west of Seoul, South Korea, 13 October 2026. Eight customers, including one in cardiac arrest, were injured in the stabbing incident, with the attacker arrested at the scene. EPA/YONHAP SOUTH KOREA OUT

Officers responding to the scene arrested a male suspect and were investigating the motive and circumstances of the attack, a police spokesperson said by telephone.

A witness cited by Yonhap News Agency said the suspect appeared to have knives tethered to both hands and moved through several floors of the shopping complex, attacking people as he went before being subdued by bystanders and handed over to police.

South Korean media reports described the suspect as a man in his 60s who was wearing an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet.

The victims included six women and two men, with a woman in her 20s in cardiac arrest, the reports said.

Incheon, west of Seoul, is home to South Korea's main airport and forms part of the wider Seoul metropolitan area.

South Korea was shaken by a series of stabbing rampages in 2023, including attacks that left multiple people dead and injured.

More recently in May, a 17-year-old girl was fatally stabbed and another teenager hurt in the southwestern city of Gwangju by a man in his 20s, who was later sentenced by a court to life in prison.

(Reporting by Kyu-seok ShimEditing by Ed Davies)

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