Seven children were among nine people hacked to death in an attack on a kindergarten in northwest China today.
Eleven children were wounded in the attack this morning in Nanzheng county, a rural corner of Shaanxi province, the official Xinhua news agency reported. Two children were in serious condition.
A 48-year-old man, Wu Huanming, used a kitchen cleaver to kill five boys and two girls as well as the mother-son team who owned and ran the private kindergarten, Xinhua said.
He then returned home and killed himself, Xinhua said, citing a statement from the province emergency office. "His motive for the attack was not immediately known."
One local man, Zheng Xiulan, said the attacker had rented out the rooms for the privately run kindergarten.
"Only about two of the children in the kindergarten were not injured, but I don't know how many died in the end. There was blood everywhere", Mr Zheng said. "I don't know why he did it."
Officials in Nanzheng would not comment on the attack.
The incident is sure to stoke public disquiet and demands for stricter school security after five attacks on school children in recent weeks.
Seventeen people - all but two of them children – have been killed and over 80 injured in school attacks since March. China bans nearly all citizens from owning handguns, and all the attacks involved knives and cleavers.
Even before the latest bloodshed, President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao had demanded action, the top law-and-order official, Zhou Yongkang, told officials to beef up school security, and police vowed to identify disturbed people who could pose a threat to children.
The deaths of children strike an especially deep chord in this country where most urban families are allowed to have only one child, said Yang Dongping, an expert on education at the Beijing Institute of Technology.
"I personally feel that media reports about these attacks have helped to create a copy-cat effect", he said. "People who are mentally unstable or who nurse hatred towards society then feel that this is a way of exacting revenge, or of making their demands."
Reuters