BEIJING (AP) — A slashing attack Tuesday at a busy railway station in southern China left six people injured, police said, in the third high-profile assault on civilians at a train station in a little more than two months.

It was not immediately clear if there was more than one assailant, and there was no immediate word on a motive for the violence in the Guangdong provincial capital of Guangzhou.

The slashings came despite heightened security countrywide in the wake of two deadly attacks at train stations blamed on extremists from far-western China. The country also has seen mass stabbings carried out by people with grudges against society or who were deemed mentally ill.

The latest incident happened late morning at the Guangzhou Railway Station, the city's police said on their microblog. Police arrived on the scene as passengers were being hacked, and officers shot and subdued a male suspect with a knife after he failed to respond to a police warning, the statement said.

It wasn't clear from the statement whether there was more than one attacker. The Guangzhou Daily cited witnesses as saying there were four attackers. It said the injured included a person who was stabbed in the head and neck and was in critical condition, and others who had received arm wounds.

Police said six people were injured and taken to a hospital, not including the suspect.

Last week, a suicide bombing at a train station in the far-western region of Xinjiang — where extremists among the Turkic Uighur Muslim population have been waging a simmering insurgency against Beijing for years — left three people dead and 79 injured, prompting Chinese President Xi Jinping to demand "decisive actions" against terrorism.

In March, five knife-wielding men and women believed to be Uighurs slashed at crowds at a railway station in Kunming city in southwestern China, killing 29 people. Four attackers were killed by police.