Virginia Tech was struck by another tragedy on its campus last night when a graduate student was slain in a brutal knife attack and another graduate student was charged with murder in her death, the university said in a report on its Web site.

The victim was identified as Xin Yang, a female accounting student from Beijing who had just arrived on the campus two weeks ago. The student accused of attacking her was identified as Haiyang Zhu, a male Ph.D. candidate in economics from Ningbo, China.

“The nature of the incident points to an isolated, very personal tragedy,” Virginia Tech’s president, Charles W. Steger, said today at a news conference. In 2007 a student at Virginia Tech fatally shot 32 students and professors in an apparently random attack.

Wednesday’s incident occurred shortly after 7 p.m. at the Au Bon Pain cafe in the university’s Graduate Life Center. Mr. Zhu and Ms. Yang had been having coffee there, and records indicated that they knew each other, university officials said. A minute after receiving a 911 call, campus police officers arrived at the cafe, said Wendell R. Flinchum, Virginia Tech’s chief of police. “It was a horrific crime scene,” he said. “The victim had been decapitated.”

Officers immediately apprehended Mr. Zhu, who was charged with first-degree murder and jailed without bond.

Virginia Tech has remained open while providing counseling to witnesses and first responders, as well as to other students and employees on the campus. The university’s international center is reaching out to Chinese students in particular, Mr. Steger said.

“Once again we are challenged as a community to offer support to one another as we process this recent event,” the president wrote in an open letter to the campus. —Sara Lipka