A 15-year-old boy has been killed and a 16-year-old boy injured in a double stabbing in Hackney in east London.

Police were called just before 9pm on Wednesday to Somerford Grove in Hackney, where the 15-year-old victim was found. Despite the efforts of air ambulance paramedics to save the boy, he was pronounced dead at around 9.50pm. His next of kin have been informed.

Kalender Ozcelik, a shopkeeper at the 24-hour off-licence Elif Food Centre on nearby Shacklewell Road, said the other victim ran into his shop just after 9pm pleading for help.

“The boy ran in, bleeding from his back, shouting: ‘Help me,’” Ozcelik said. “We called the ambulance and they took him in.”

CCTV footage from inside the shop, seen by the Guardian, shows a young man walking into the shop holding his back. According to police he was taken to hospital with injuries that were not life-threatening.

A large area between Somerford Grove and Shacklewell Road remains cordoned off, a forensics tent still marks the spot where the 15-year-old victim died, overlooked by a large warehouse of self-storage units.

The Metropolitan police have put a section 60 order in place across Hackney, enabling them to stop and search anyone.

Quick Guide Knife crime in the UK Show What is the scale of the problem? Police chiefs have described the recent spate of knife crime as ‘a national emergency’. In the first two months of 2019 there were 17 homicides in London alone, where 35% of all knife crimes are committed. The number of NHS England admissions among people aged 10-19 with knife wounds has risen 60% in five years, surpassing 1,000 last year. The number of knife and offensive weapon offences in England and Wales have risen to their highest level for nearly a decade, with the number of cases dealt with by the criminal justice system up by more than a third since 2015. Knife crime-related offences recorded by the police rose by 8% in England and Wales in 2018. Figures on sentences handed out for such crimes, published by the Ministry of Justice, showed there were 22,041 knife and weapon offences formally dealt with by the criminal justice system in the year ending March 2019. This is the highest rate since 2010, when the number was 23,667.

What happens to people caught with knives? In the year ending March 2019, 37% of knife and offensive weapon offences resulted in an immediate custodial sentence, compared with 22% in 2009, when the data was first published. The average length of the custodial sentences rose to the longest in a decade, from 5.5 months to 8.1 months. Are younger people more at risk of being involved in knife crime? The MoJ figures revealed that the number of juvenile offenders convicted or cautioned for possession or threats using a knife or offensive weapon increased by almost half (48%) between the year ending March 2015 and the year ending March 2019. The increase in adult offenders over the same period was smaller, at 31%. However, adult offenders still accounted for 74% of the total increase in cautions and convictions received for those offences in that period. What are the government doing about knife crime? In March 2019 chancellor, Philip Hammond, handed an extra £100m to police forces in England and Wales after a spate of fatal stabbings led to a renewed focus on rising knife crime and police resources. In the same month more than 10,000 knives were seized and 1,372 suspects arrested during a week-long national knife crime crackdown. Officers carried out 3,771 weapons searches, during which 342 knives were found. Another 10,215 were handed in as part of amnesties.

A new Offensive Weapons Act was passed in May 2019, making it illegal to possess dangerous weapons including knuckledusters, zombie knives and death star knives. It also made it a criminal offence to dispatch bladed products sold online without verifying the buyer is over 18.

The Met commissioner, Cressida Dick, said the two victims were with a group of other boys and a girl, and that there had been “some sort of confrontation with another group”. No arrests had been made.

Residents of Somerford Grove, a seemingly sleepy low-rise social housing estate built around green communal lawns, which were covered in daisies, spoke of their shock and sadness.

Two teenage boys rode their bikes to the scene of the attack and said they knew the boy who died. “We were friends, for about five years. He was bubbly, well-liked, making jokes all the time. He loved music and was a producer as well, mixing stuff like Afrobeats and drill on his computer,” one of them said. “He was in no gang. I last saw him two days ago.

“Police come here a lot, but it feels shocking. I never thought one of my friends would get murdered.”

Katrina King, 45, who lives around the corner but knows the block well, said she was not surprised by the stabbings.

“It used to be nice here, but now Stoke Newington is so expensive, the young, if they haven’t got money, it’s very difficult for them and things can get out of hand.”

Mary, another tenant from a neighbouring estate, said police cuts were to blame. “The community policeman on his bike is missed. He was vital, he went around and was a point of contact for everyone, but then the cuts came, and he was pulled. It’s a tragedy.”

The mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, tweeted: “I am deeply saddened by the fatal stabbing of a 15-year-old boy in Hackney. My thoughts are with his family and loved ones. This horrific violence has absolutely no place on our streets.”