The British public overwhelmingly expects violent crime to get worse over the next year and has little faith in politicians to halt it, according to a new poll.

The British public overwhelmingly expects violent crime to get worse over the next year and has little faith in politicians to halt it, according to a new poll.

More than eight-out-of-10 (83%) people questioned said they had become more concerned about knife crime over the past 12 months and a similar number (82%) said they expected violent crime to increase over the next year.

The poll, by ComRes for BBC2's The Daily Politics show, was published as it was revealed the 18th teenager to meet a violent death in London this year had called out for his mother shortly after being stabbed and beaten.

Shakilus Townsend, 16, was attacked by a gang just after 2pm on Thursday in south-east London.

A witness said he had asked for his mother and cried "I don't want to die" as he lay bleeding in the street. He died in St George's Hospital, Tooting, just after midnight on the day he was stabbed.

The poll also came as detectives revealed the killer of two French students who were bound, gagged and stabbed to death in a bedsit in south London last Sunday may have died for the sake of two handheld games consoles, which were stolen.

Laurent Bonomo and Gabriel Ferez, both 23, were found with more than 240 stab wounds.

The savage murder of the bio-chemistry students came just over a month after Glasgow was stunned by the murders of soft drinks sales consultant Moira Jones, 40, originally from England, and trainee restaurant manageress Eleni Pachou, 25, from Greece.

Meanwhile, police are hunting three black teenagers who ambushed Shakilus, known as Shaki to his friends, before they stabbed him in the chest and beat his head.

The teenager was attacked by a masked gang armed with knives and baseball bats in Thornton Heath, south London, and the youths had pulled up their hoods and covered their faces in bandanas.

Police also want to trace a black girl, in her mid-teens and wearing a floral dress, who stood back with up to eight others and watched the sickening attack. Officers have recovered two knives, one of which was described by a witness as 18-inches long.

The detective leading the investigation said it was "another senseless incident in which a young life has been taken away by a knife".

Residents spoke yesterday of how they desperately tried to save Shakilus as blood poured from his chest. Dee Bamina, 35, attempted to stem the bleeding with a bath towel after another neighbour took him 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'. I tried to ask his name and tell him to calm down and lie down because he was trying to get up and go."

She said the boy was saying "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, who is heading the inquiry, said the attackers were not believed to be from the area because they ran off in different directions looking for a way to escape.

Witness Richard Higgins, 17, said: "I thought he had tripped at first then I saw the knife. It was a big kitchen knife, maybe 18 inches.

"He had stab wounds on his stomach and one big, long wound on his chest."

A 17-year-old boy who lives near where Shakilus was killed said stabbings were common.

"If he hadn't died, no one would have cared about this, it would have just been another stabbing," he said.

"How are the police or the government going to be able to sort this out if we as kids don't know why this sort of stuff's going on?"

The attack on Shakilus came as three teenagers appeared in court in the north of the city accused of stabbing 16-year-old Ben Kinsella to death last weekend.

In separate incidents, Tunisian Hamouda Bessaad, 34, was stabbed to death in Old Kent Road on Monday, while Dee Willis, 28, died after a knife attack in Peckham the following day.

Metropolitan Police Deputy Commissioner Paul Stephenson is heading up a 75-man taskforce dedicated to targeting gang members.

He said tackling knife crime was the force's "number one priority".