At least three people have been killed in a knife attack in Changsha City in China before police opened fire and killed a suspect.  Reports say it was an attack by a group of people with similarities to the train station attack earlier this month in which at least 29 people were killed.

The state run Xinhua news agency released a photograph of the dead suspect on the street outside the marketplace in the southern city of Changsha, the capital of Hunan province.  The Hunan Daily Newspaper reported another suspect was captured but three more escaped.  Xinhua gave no details on the identities of the attackers.

But two weeks ago, Muslim separatists hacked and slashed at commuters at the busy train station in Kunming, killing at least 29 people and wounding more than a hundred before police killed four of the attackers.  Authorities say the attackers were from the restive Xinjiang region, where ethnic Uighurs extremists refer to the area as “East Turkestan”.

The attack in the morning happened a day after the National People's Congress, China's top legislature, wrapped up its annual session in the capital Beijing.