BREAKING: Three injured after knife attack in Shanghai's People's Square [Updated]

A knife attack in Shanghai's People's Square left two pedestrians and one traffic policeman injured earlier this afternoon.

Thankfully, victims made off with non-life-threatening injuries thanks in part to the intervention of a foreigner visiting the tourist attraction and busy thoroughfare.

The man, described as 1.8 meters talll, around 50 years old and accompanied by a foreign woman of a similar age, is said to have punched the knifeman in the back several times as he struggled with another man, after which the attacker fled in the direction of Xizang Zhong Lu.

One of the injured, a man in his 20s, suffered cuts to his face, hands, chest and abdomen. The more seriously injured of the two victims, however, was a 59-year-old traffic policeman who sustained a ten-centimeter-deep, 20-centimeter-long cut to his leg, a V-shaped gash to his forehead 15 centimeters in length and a three-centimeter-long cut to his left eyebrow.

While the knifeman's motives remain unknown, state-run CCTV news reports that the attacker from Anhui Province, suffers from "mental illness."

The Paper has claimed he is a 37-year-old working as a restaurant chef, responsible carving patterns into fruit with the same knife he used to commit his attack. It has been reported that he did not know any of the victims.

[Images via Xinmin, Wanjia]