BEIJING — United States officials worked on Tuesday to bring home four injured instructors from Iowa's Cornell College who were stabbed in the northeastern Chinese city of Jilin, where they were teaching.

Jilin city police said a 55-year-old man surnamed Cui was walking in a public park on Monday when he bumped into a foreigner, stabbed that foreigner and three non-Chinese who were with him, as well as a Chinese person who attempted to intervene. A police statement did not give any indication of the motive.

The police arrested the suspect the same day. The instructors from Cornell College were teaching at Beihua University, officials at the US school said.

Among the wounded was David Zabner, who was descending a mountain when he heard a scream.

"I turned around to find a man brandishing a knife at me. I didn't immediately realize what was happening. I thought my coworkers had been pushed, and he, for some reason, was trying to push me," Zabner told Iowa Public Radio News from his hospital room.

"And then I looked down at my shoulder and realized, 'I'm bleeding. I've been stabbed.'"

He and the other injured were rushed to a hospital for treatment and none of them were in critical condition, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lin Jian told a daily briefing Tuesday. He said police believe the attack in Jilin's Beishan Park was an isolated one, based on a preliminary assessment, and the investigation was ongoing.

Zabner's brother, Iowa state lawmaker Adam Zabner, described his brother in a social media post as a doctoral student at Tufts University who was in China under the Cornell-Beihua relationship.

Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds and several members of the state's congressional delegation posted on social media that they were working with officials to assist in any way possible, including in bringing the instructors home.

Cornell College President Jonathan Brand said in a statement that the instructors were attacked while at the park with a faculty member from Beihua, which is in an outlying part of Jilin, an industrial city about 1,000 kilometers (600 miles) northeast of the capital Beijing. Monday was a public holiday in China.

US Ambassador to China Nicholas Burns wrote on X, formerly Twitter, that he was "angered and deeply troubled by the stabbing" of three Americans and one noncitizen resident of Iowa.

"We are doing all we can do help them and hope for their full & speedy recovery," he added.

In Washington, the White House said on Tuesday it was "deeply concerned" by the stabbing.

"Our team has been in touch with these Americans and our [Chinese] counterparts to ensure that the victims' needs are met, and appropriate law enforcement steps are being taken," White House National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said on X, formerly Twitter.

The attack happened as both Beijing and Washington are seeking to expand people-to-people exchanges to help bolster relations amid tensions over trade and such international issues as Taiwan, the South China Sea and the war in Ukraine.

News of the incident was suppressed in China, where the government maintains control on information about anything considered sensitive. There are limited reports about it, but China's state media have strictly adhered to the official account.

Some social media accounts posted foreign media reports about the attack, but a hashtag about it was blocked on a popular portal and photos and video of the incident were quickly taken down.

WITH AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE AND XINHUA NEWS AGENCY

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