Police have launched a murder investigation after a man believed to have been in his 20s was stabbed.

Officers said they found the wounded man in Kentish Town, north-west London, after being called at about 8.30pm on Monday.

He was pronounced dead at the scene near the Grafton Road junction with Vicars Road despite the efforts of medics.

The killing came on the same day the prime minister hosted a Downing Street summit on knife crime. Theresa May said the issue was “deep-seated” and would require a cross-society effort to tackle it. “We cannot simply arrest ourselves out of this problem,” May said. But police officers, teachers and nurses have criticised government plans to make them accountable for failing to “spot warning signs” of violent crime among young people.

The summit convened after days of violence across the country, including a slew of serious stabbings in Edmonton, north London, from Saturday night into Sunday morning, as well as the death of a 40-year-old motorist at the wheel of his vehicle in Clapham, south-west London, and a 29-year-old fatally stabbed on Thursday afternoon in Toxteth, Liverpool.

A friend of the Kentish Town victim told the Evening Standard: “He was loved. He has everyone out here, every culture in the area was out for him. He’s not lived his life yet.”