A man has been stabbed to death in Peckham.

The man in his 20s is the sixth person to be killed by knives in London since Saturday.

Local business owners were heard screaming and crying as they ran into the street to try and save the man following the attack in Peckham Rye.

Police were called to Rye Lane at 3.15pm on Friday to reports of a fight. Paramedics and police officers rushed to the scene and found a man with stab wounds.

He was pronounced dead half an hour later at 3.51pm.

Local resident Laura, who did not want to give her second name, told the Standard she was in the kitchen at the back of her flat when she heard a bang “and women from the salons screaming”.

She said: “My flat looks out on Blenheim Grove, the man fell across the road from me.

"I heard a bang which I think was the man falling into one of the metal shutters.

"I could just see lots of women in the road screaming. There are six salons in the road all next to each other.

"It was more the screaming which drew me to the window. They were all in the road screaming and crying.

"I couldn't see the man, he was surrounded by women."

She added: "It's sad a young man lost his life today."

Passer-by Chad O’Carroll said: “Looked pretty serious.

“They were holding back a tall man who was yelling at the police and looked like he was in a state of shock.”

Mr Carroll said moments later the man was on the phone saying someone had died.

As commuters poured out of Peckham Rye station they were met with a massive police cordon as officers and police cars blocked the road at the corner with Blenheim Grove.

A swathe of road was taped off by police as officers directed people around the crime scene.

One witness described the scene as "chaos".

Police said the young man’s next of kin has been told.

The man’s death comes after a week of carnage on the capital’s streets which saw three murders at the weekend and three more this week.

On Saturday, 42-year-old Damien McLaughlin was stabbed to death in Enfield. In the early hours of Sunday morning, a 17-year-old teenage cyclist was stabbed to death in Battersea.

The following night a 60-year-old man was killed in a knife attack on Bow Common Lane, Mile End.

On Tuesday night, another man was killed in Wandsworth after collapsing in the street outside Wandsworth Preparatory School.

In the early hours of Friday morning, a man was found stabbed to death on a bus in Marylebone.

The killings come as figures from the Met Police show a 24 per cent rise in knife crime in London last year. Knife attacks had risen by a fifth, year-on-year figures revealed.