An official has reported that a stabbing at a kindergarten in southern China resulted in six deaths, including three children, and one injury.
According to a city administration spokesman, the attack happened on Monday in Lianjiang, Guangdong province. “The victims include one teacher, two parents and three students… and one suspect has been arrested,” she told the AFP news agency.
The attack occurred at 7.40 am (23:40 GMT on Sunday), according to local police, who were also quoted by the BBC. The suspect, a 25-year-old man with the last name Wu, was apprehended 20 minutes later. According to the article, the case has been labelled as an “intentional assault” by the police.
With 130 million views as of 12:20 p.m. (04:20 GMT), the incident was the most popular trending topic on the social media site Weibo. However, videos taken by bystanders purporting to depict the crime scene were taken down from both Douyin and Weibo.
Despite official efforts to increase security, China has recently experienced a number of knife incidents in educational facilities. Three individuals were killed in an incident in southern Jiangxi province last August that also had a nursery school as a target.
A knife-wielding man entered a kindergarten in southern China in April 2021, killing two children and injuring 16 more. A knife-wielding attacker wounded 37 children and two adults at a primary school in southern China in June of the previous year.
And in November 2019, a man climbed a kindergarten wall in southwest Yunnan province and sprayed people with a corrosive liquid, injuring 51 of them, mostly students.
In the same year, a 40-year-old man was detained after a “school-related criminal case” in the central Hubei province resulted in the deaths of eight kids and the injury of two more.
And in the northern province of Shaanxi in April 2018, a 28-year-old man opened fire outside a school, killing nine college students and injuring another 12. The assailant then claimed that he committed the assault in retaliation for being bullied by a kid at the same school.
