HONG KONG — Three people were killed and 15 others were injured in a knife attack at a supermarket in Shanghai on Monday evening, local police said, in the latest of a series of such stabbings in China.

All of the victims were immediately sent to the hospital for treatment; three of them died despite rescue efforts, the Shanghai Public Security Bureau said in a statement Tuesday. The others are not in life-threatening condition.

A 37-year-old suspect, surnamed Lin, was apprehended at the scene in Shanghai’s Songjiang district shortly after the attack. Lin went to Shanghai and carried out the attack “to vent his anger due to personal economic disputes,” police said. It was not immediately clear where Lin is originally from.

The case remains under investigation, police said.

The incident, which took place on the eve of the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, continues a series of knife attacks across the country this year, including some that targeted foreigners.

Last month, a 10-year-old Japanese boy died after he was stabbed on his way to a Japanese school in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen, raising concerns about the safety about Japanese nationals in China. It was the second such attack on a Japanese national after a stabbing in Suzhou in June injured a Japanese woman and her child and killed a Chinese bystander who tried to stop the attacker.

In June, a knife attack at a public park in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin injured four U.S. university instructors, none of them critically.

Stabbing as an act of revenge against society is not uncommon in China.

In 2022, a man stabbed 15 people in a hospital in Shanghai, severely wounding four minors. A court said he carried out the act out of resentment against society following a failed investment and sentenced him to death.