BEIJING, Oct 26 — Police in central China were hunting today for a man who killed seven people including a village Communist Party chief before jumping off a bridge, officers said.

The suspect, surnamed Gao, stabbed to death a family of five including two children in Wuhan yesterday, the city’s police force said in a statement on its official Weibo microblog.

He fatally wounded a passer-by and a cab driver while trying to steal a car to escape, it added, saying he then jumped off a bridge over the Yangtze River early yesterday morning.

The force did not say whether the man was thought to have survived the jump.

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The party chief of Xiaosi township, his wife, daughter-in-law and two grandchildren were among those stabbed to death, state-run news site China.org reported.

Another wounded child found at the scene was still alive and rushed to hospital, local media said.

Police said they were still investigating.

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China does not allow civilians to carry guns, and many violent crimes in recent decades have involved knives.

In February 2019, a man who suspected his wife of adultery stabbed eight others to death in a village in northwestern Gansu province.

And a knife-wielding man killed nine pupils outside a middle school in northern China’s Shaanxi province in 2018. — AFP