BEIJING (Kyodo) -- Five people including three minors were stabbed by a man in Beijing's Haidian district on Monday, with their injuries not life-threatening and the suspect detained at the scene, the city's public safety authority said.

The suspect is a 50-year-old man, it said. The Japanese Embassy in Beijing said Japanese nationals were not among those injured.

The knife attack followed similar incidents across China that happened earlier this year. In June, a Chinese bus attendant died after she attempted to stop a knife-wielding man who injured a Japanese mother and child at a bus stop in Suzhou near Shanghai.

In September, a Japanese boy was stabbed on his way to school in Shenzhen in southern China's Guangdong Province and later died from the wounds.

Several schoolchildren were also injured earlier this month in Guangzhou and Ningbo. Some experts suggest frustration among people due to an economic downturn in the world's second-largest economy is behind a series of stabbing incidents.