The latest teenage victim of London’s knife crime epidemic asked for his mother and said "I don’t want to die" as he lay bleeding in the street, a witness said today.

Shakilus Townsend, 16, was attacked by a gang at around 1.45pm yesterday in what a senior detective described as "another senseless incident in which a young life has been taken away by a knife".

He died in St George’s Hospital, Tooting, southeast London, just after midnight, the 18th teenager to meet a violent death in London this year and the 13th to die from knife wounds.

Today, neighbours in Beulah Crescent, Thornton Heath, said that they desperately tried to save Shakilus.

Dee Bamina, 35, tried to stem the bleeding from a wound to his chest with a bath towel after another neighbour brought the stabbed teenager into the communal doorway of her block of flats.

She said: "I think a group of boys must have been after the boy. All I heard was them saying ’get him from the other side’."

Ms Bamina saw a gang of four or five boys aged 15 to 19 with scarves covering their faces. One had a baseball bat. A light-skinned black girl was also with them, she said.

Ms Bamina said: "I tried to ask him his name and to tell him to calm down and lie down because he was trying to get up and go."

She said the boy was saying "I don’t want to die" and "Where’s my Mum? I want my Mum". The 16-year-old told her he did not know his attackers.

Detective Chief Inspector Cliff Lyons, of the Metropolitan Police Homicide and Serious Crime Command, who is leading the investigation, said: "This is another senseless incident in which a young life has been taken away by a knife.

"Given that this happened outside a block of flats in broad daylight, I am certain there are people who will have witnessed this murder.

"I would urge those people to come forward and speak to the police to help us bring justice to Shakilus’s family and friends."

No arrests have yet been made over the killing.

The attack comes in a week which has seen a spate of stabbings in the capital. On Sunday, 16-year-old Ben Kinsella, brother of the former EastEnders star Brooke Kinsella, was knifed to death in Islington.

Later the same day, the bodies of French students Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were found riddled with knife wounds after a flat fire in New Cross, south-east London. Bonomo was stabbed 196 times, suffering injuries which the police officer leading the investigation said were the worst he had ever seen.

Hamouda Bessaad, a Tunisian national, was stabbed to death on Old Kent Road, southeast London, on Monday, while Dee Willis, 28, died after a knife attack in Peckham a day later.

Local reports suggested that Shakilus Townsend received multiple stab wounds in the chest during yesterday's attack. He was found by police and ambulance staff in a doorway to a block of flats.

Robert Temple, 72, an former army medic, was already at the scene and treating the teen before the emergency services arrived.

He said: "It was horrific. The poor lad was covered in blood and crying."

Mr Temple said a blade, between four and five inches long, was handed to police after being found in bushes nearby.

Eyewitness, Richard Higgins, 17, was shaken by the ordeal

He said: "The first thing I saw was loads of blood. I heard the boy crying for his mum over and over again. Even when the ambulance came he was trying to take off the oxygen mask and speak to the ambulance crew to tell them to call his mum."

Mr Higgins added: "He was tiny and looked terrified."

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