A woman was found dead with cuts to her neck and back on a road in northern Hong Kong on Saturday night.

Police said they received a report at around 7.30pm that a woman in her 50s had been spotted lying in a pool of blood on Kam Pok Road in Yuen Long, a deserted industrial area surrounded by thick vegetation southeast of the Mai Po Nature Reserve.

Responding officers found cuts on her neck and back. The woman was certified dead at the scene, and the case has been classified as murder.

Police searched the heavy undergrowth and checked trucks in the area, but no arrests have been made so far.

Kam Pok Road in Yuen Long.

Police handled 30 murder reports last year, up 30 per cent from 23 cases in 2021. The force said half of the 2022 caseload involved family members and that all 30 cases were solved.

Hong Kong was shocked three months ago by the slaying of model Abby Choi Tin-fung, whose headless body was found in the ground-floor flat of a three-storey village house in Tai Po’s Lung Mei Tsuen.

Choi’s former spouse, Alex Kwong, 28, his father, Kwong Kau, 65, and elder brother Anthony Kwong Kong-kit, 32, are behind bars on a joint murder charge for allegedly killing the influencer.

The court has heard that a preliminary investigation confirmed blood found in Anthony Kwong’s car and the human skull and legs found in the village house belonged to the deceased.

Jenny Li Sui-heung, the socialite’s ex-mother-in-law, has also been remanded in custody after being charged with perverting the course of justice.