A man in his 20s has been stabbed to death in London at the end of another violent week in the capital.

A murder investigation has been launched after officers were called to Cambridge Gardens in Kingston upon Thames, south-west London, at 2.16am on Sunday, the Metropolitan police said.

Police and paramedics attempted to resuscitate the man but he was pronounced dead at the scene at 3.02am. No arrests have been made. A postmortem and formal identification are yet to take place.

It comes four days after the aspiring rapper Siddique Kamara, also known as Incognito and SK, was killed and two others were injured in a stabbing in Camberwell, south London.

Kamara was cleared of murdering Abdirahman Mohamed at the Old Bailey in January.

The most recent official crime figures showed another spike in violent crime. The number of recorded offences involving knives or sharp instruments rose by 16% to 40,147 in England and Wales, according to figures for the year to March published by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

The number of homicides – covering murder and manslaughter – rose by 12% from the previous year to 701, excluding exceptional incidents with multiple victims such as the terrorist attacks in London and Manchester.

In one of her last actions as home secretary, Amber Rudd launched a new strategy to clamp down on violent crime, which has been rising since 2014.

The plan is backed by £40m of Home Office funding and an offensive weapons bill to ban the sale of corrosive liquids to under-18s and introduce tougher restrictions on buying knives online. The strategy will focus on the links between drug trade, particularly for crack cocaine, and violent crime. It was launched amid controversy over the potential link between dwindling police numbers and the rise in violence.