Six people including three children have been killed in a kindergarten stabbing in China’s south-eastern Guangdong province.
The other victims are a teacher and two parents, AFP reported, quoting a local official. One person is also injured.
Police say they have arrested a 25-year-old man with the surname Wu in Lianjiang and have called it a case of “intentional assault” but have not elaborated on a possible motive.
The attack happened on Monday at 07:40 local time (23:40 Sunday GMT), just as parents were dropping their children off for summer classes. The man was arrested at 08:00.
The BBC reports that stores near the kindergarten in the surrounding area had been sealed off.
Lianjiang has a population of about 1.87 million.
As videos of the attack spread across Chinese social media, they sparked outrage and shock.
The stabbings also followed an unsettlingly predictable pattern. Although China forbids the use of firearms, there have been a number of knife assaults there in recent years. On one occasion, the assailant also injured a class of 50 children with chemical spray.
Since 2010, there have been at least 17 knife incidents in educational institutions such as colleges and universities.
Three people were killed and six others were injured when a knife-wielding attacker invaded a kindergarten in the southern Jiangxi province in August of last year.
In April 2021, two children died while 16 others were injured during a mass stabbing in Beiliu City, in Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
In October 2018, 14 children were injured in a knife attack at a kindergarten in Chongqing, southwest China.
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