A Chinese man who carried out a knife attack in eastern China last June that wounded a Japanese woman and her child and killed a bus attendant trying to protect them has been sentenced to death, according to a Japanese official.

The case was one of two knife attacks targeting Japanese nationals in China last year. In September, a 10-year-old Japanese student was fatally stabbed near his school in Shenzhen. The trial of the alleged perpetrator in that case only just began.

A Chinese court said that Zhou Jiasheng, 52, had carried out the attack on 24 June after he lost the will to live, following the loss of his job and subsequent debts. The attack had taken place outside a Japanese school in the Chinese province of Suzhou - and was one of three attacks on foreigners in China last year.