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Shop owner beheaded in business dispute

A woman was beheaded and her sister stabbed to death in an attack at a shopping mall midday yesterday in Shaanxi province.

A woman was beheaded and her sister stabbed to death in an attack at a shopping mall midday yesterday in Shaanxi province.

The decapitated woman's husband was also seriously injured in the attack, which local police believe was sparked by a business dispute.

Li Qian, 35, was decapitated, while her sister Li Jiaxin, 38, and Qian's husband Bai Xiaohu, 38, were stabbed in their necks and head, the publicity team for the Communist Party's commission in Yanan said on Weibo.

Li Jiaxin was taken to hospital for treatment but died soon after; the husband survived.

Police stopped and detained Sun Jie, 38, an Anhui native, as he tried to run from the shopping mall, the news website chinanews.com reported.

According to police, Sun and the two sisters owned curtain shops that were next door to each other. Sun had held a grudge following some business disputes, the news website said.

Photos circulated on social media showed two people lying on the ground in front of a curtain store while two police investigators collected what appeared to be a severed head.

The attack took place in Shengda International, a mall in the city's downtown area, a few minutes walking distance from a major transport hub. Photos showed hundreds of onlookers as police sealed off the mall.

News of the attack went viral on the mainland's social media.

"How cold-hearted this guy is," one Weibo microblogger said. "How scary that it happened in a busy shopping mall."

Last Friday, two men died and one woman was injured in a knife attack at a residential compound in Beijing.

This article appeared in the South China Morning Post print edition as: Shop owner beheaded in business dispute
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