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.

A Chinese man Thursday was sentenced to death for killing a man in a knife attack near Shanghai last summer. A Japanese mother and her child were also injured on a Japanese school bus in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province.

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.