Update | 'Nowhere to escape': workers recall horror bus attack on suspect's 'last day' on job

Traumatised workers at a fruit-processing plant spoke last night about how a routine ride to work on the company bus turned to horror when a colleague launched a chopper attack that left eight people injured - one with her little finger cut off.

Still shocked hours after the attack, they said they felt trapped when the assailant, who they said was on his last day at work after being sacked, rose from his seat at the rear of the bus and started hacking at the heads and shoulders of passengers.

The attack stopped only when other passengers and the driver overpowered the suspect, Tsang Chiu-ho, known to colleagues as "Brother Ho".

"It happened all of a sudden. We were trapped in the bus and there was nowhere to escape," a 55-year-old, who suffered cuts to her head and right hand, told the South China Morning Post.

The suspect, whose job was cutting up fruit at Fresh-cut Produces in Tai Po, was in Castle Peak psychiatric hospital last night.

The drama occurred on the Yuen Long Highway shortly after the bus left Tuen Mun at 7.30am with 29 workers, mostly women, on board.

"We thought he was just tapping on people's heads and shoulders with a newspaper," an apparently unharmed woman told local media. "Then we realised it was a knife."