(Beijing) A knife attack in a kindergarten in China killed six people and injured one on Monday in Lianjiang in the south of the country, local authorities said.
Among the seven victims are “a teacher, two parents and three students”, said a spokeswoman for the municipality, adding that a suspect had been arrested.
She was not able to immediately specify the age or identity of the victims.
The arrested suspect is 25 years old, local police said in a statement, identifying him as Wu.
“It was a knife attack”, “an intentional assault”, said the police, who are now trying to verify the identity of the victims.
The attack took place around 7:40 a.m. local time (Sunday 7:40 p.m. EST) in the city of Lianjiang, located in Guangdong province, according to state-backed media China News Network.
In a video published by the government daily of the neighboring province of Hunan, Sanxiang Metropolis Daily, a tall and thin man, his hands clasped behind his back, is seen being pushed by officers into a police car.
Other videos shot by passers-by and claiming to show the scene of the crime were quickly removed from Chinese social networks Douyin (local name of Tiktok) and Weibo (similar to Twitter).
Violence on the rise
China prohibits its citizens from owning firearms. But stabbing attacks have increased in recent years in the country.
Generally speaking, violence is on the rise in the world’s second-largest economy, where the gap between poor and rich has widened rapidly in recent years.
Deadly attacks specifically targeting schools have taken place across the country, prompting authorities to step up security around schools.
In August 2022, a stabbing attack on a kindergarten in southwestern Jiangxi province left three people dead and six injured.
An individual armed with a knife attacked a nursery school in Beiliu, in the south of the country, in April 2021, killing two children and injuring 16 people.
In April 2018, a 28-year-old man killed nine college students as they left their school in Shaanxi province (north).
The man, sentenced to death and executed in the months that followed, said he acted out of revenge after being the victim of harassment when he was a student at the same college.
In January 2017, a man armed with a kitchen knife injured 11 children in a kindergarten in the autonomous region of Guangxi (south).
And it was also armed with a large kitchen knife that in May 2010, a 48-year-old man killed seven children and two adults, and injured at least 20 people in a kindergarten in northern China.
This tragedy occurred after a series of four similar knife or hammer attacks, perpetrated by madmen claiming to be frustrated in their professional or emotional life.