Six people have died following a knifing incident in a market in Changsha, capital city of central of China's Hunan province.

According to law enforcement, the altercation began when a bread vendor got into an argument with a customer. One pulled out a knife and stabbed the other to death before turning on passerby. Police arrived on the scene and shot down the aggressor. Another suspect is also reported to have been taken into custody.

China has been on the edge since a tragic mass stabbing on March 1 in the southwestern city of Kunming. Several people wielding long knives entered a train station and attacked at random, killing 29 people and injuring 140 others. Police shot down four of the assailants, arresting the remaining four.

The Chinese government blamed the Kunming attack on Muslim Uighur separatists from the Xinjiang region.

Early reports indicated that the two men involved in these latest stabbing, Hebir Turdi and Memet Abla, were ethnic Uighurs from Xinjiang. However, it is not suspected that the knifing was premeditated.

"It was an internal dispute," said a witness to CNN. "One of their own people got stabbed to death. An old lady walked out of a shop there, and she was trying to mediate, saying: 'Don't do this. You can talk through this.' Then she was suddenly hacked at."

She also noted that the weapons were not the same used in Kunming.

"The knives they were using were not long -- just kitchen knives," she said. "I saw one dropped on the ground."

Mass acts of violence are rare in China due to strict gun laws, but there are several instances of street stabings. Last September a hospital patient assaulted three nurses with a knife in Changsha.