A 23-year-old man has died after being stabbed in a south London youth club.

Police were called to Minet Road, Brixton, at about 18:45 GMT on Thursday where the victim was given first aid by officers at the scene. He was pronounced dead at 19:27 GMT. His next of kin have been informed and no arrests have been made, police said.

DCI Mick Norman, said: “This was an appalling attack on a young man in a youth centre – a place where he was entitled to feel safe.” “All the early indications are that this attack was premeditated and targeted”, he added.

Pastor and community campaigner Lorraine Jones said she had heard a fight had broken out at the youth club and the man was stabbed in the groin: “The police were called, they tried to do CPR with a defibrillator, the ambulance came and pronounced him dead.”

Ms Jones, whose 20-year-old son Dwayne Simpson was stabbed to death in Brixton in 2014, lives nearby.

She said the youth club was one of only two in the area serving around 8,000 children: “The club has been going for many, many years. They have done a huge amount of work, hundreds of thousands if not millions of hours with young people and they need help. “We know because of the lack of facilities in Lambeth we are having to accommodate children from other boroughs and that’s not acceptable.”

Police want to hear from those who were at the youth centre either before, during or after that attack.

“The youth centre was open at the time and sadly many young people present would have witnessed what unfolded”, DCI Norman said.

The killing brings this year’s homicide rate up to 14, nine of which were fatal stabbings.

Between October 2017 and September 2018 the number of knife crimes in London hit an eight year high, according to figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Across England and Wales there were 285 killings by a knife or sharp instrument in the year ending March 2018, the highest since records began in 1946.

In 2019 there have been nine fatal stabbings in London so far.

Home Office figures show out of 43 forces, the Met Police saw the highest knife crime offences per head of population between April 2017 and March 2018.