A Chinese woman was killed on Thursday and her French husband wounded when they were attacked by a man with a sword in Sanlitun, a commercial district in downtown Beijing.

Beijing police said the 25-year-old suspect, surnamed Gao, who is from Tonghua, Jilin province, attacked the two without provocation at the "south entrance of Sanlitun Bar Street".

They were taken to a nearby hospital, where the woman died. Her husband was still hospitalized after surgery.

The woman, Gu Wenqing, 28, was from Shandong province. She had a younger sister. A graduate of the National Academy of Chinese Theatre Arts, Gu used to be a model. She was running a tattoo studio in Beijing, according to a friend who declined to be identified.

Her husband, a French citizen, was identified on his LinkedIn page as Mariaud Romain, a former employee of the French embassy in Beijing and a current official at France's Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Development.

According to a video shot by a witness, the suspect did not leave the scene after the attack. He walked around the area with the sword and didn't resist when police arrived. He was taken into police custody and is under investigation.

Sanlitun is known as the capital's expatriate haven, with more than 3,000 foreigners living there.

Many expats were shocked by the news.

However, Marck Ernest Thornton, project manager at Pickatable in Beijing, said, "I am not worried about living in Beijing, which I still think is a safer place than a lot of cities I have lived in or visited."

Zhou Yutong contributed to this story.

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