SHANGHAI (REUTERS) - A knife-wielding man stabbed a woman to death and injured 12 people in China's southern city of Shenzhen on Saturday, the official news agency Xinhua said, in the latest of a series of attacks that have unnerved the country.

Police said the injured were all in stable condition in hospital.

The attack by a 32-year-old man appeared to have been provoked by a marital dispute, Xinhua quoted the Southern Metropolitan Daily newspaper as saying.

Public sensitivity to knife attacks in China has been heightened by a series of incidents, including a mass stabbing at a train station in March 2014 in the south-western city of Kunming that left 31 dead.

Authorities blamed that attack on separatist militants from the restive western region of Xinjiang.

Violent crime is rare in China, compared with many other countries, but there has been a series of knife and axe attacks in recent years, many on school children.