The latest in a string of knife and bomb attacks on Chinese schools took place in the southern province of Guangdong on Monday morning, as a 25-year-old man used a knife to assault a privately operated kindergarten.
A city government spokeswoman said a teacher, two parents, and three students were killed in the attack.
Security officials in the city of Lianjiang said the assailant, identified only by his surname “Wu,” was taken into custody after the attack. The school is located in a small township called Hengshan administered by the Lianjiang municipal government.
One Chinese news network quoted a witness who said the assailant had a child who was struck by a vehicle last week. According to this report, the driver of the vehicle was one of the adults stabbed to death on Monday morning. The attack took place at roughly 7:40 a.m. local time, which would have been when parents were dropping their children off at the school.
Chinese social media exploded with anguish and outrage over the news of another brutal attack on schoolchildren. The attack became one of the hottest topics on Weibo, China’s version of Twitter, racking up over 460 million views in less than 24 hours.
“It’s outrageous to do this to children who have no power at all. How many families will be destroyed by this?” said one Weibo commenter, who indicated support for the “death penalty” for schoolyard killers.
“Why do such cases still continue to emerge?” asked another.
The BBC counted “at least 17 knife attacks in schools, colleges and universities since 2010,” including ten over the past five years. One incident involved an assailant spraying dangerous chemicals into a classroom filled with 50 children.
A similar knife attack occurred last August when a 48-year-old man stabbed teachers and students at a private kindergarten in Jiangxi. Three people were killed and six injured during that assault.
In April 2021, a 25-year-old man killed two children and injured 16 teachers and students with a kitchen knife at a kindergarten in Guangxi province. Police officials speculated the man became emotionally unstable after being divorced by his wife, an employee of the school.
One of the bloodiest Chinese school attacks took place in Shaanxi in April 2018, when a man described as a former student killed nine students and injured ten other people with a knife. Seven of the slain students were girls. Local law enforcement officials believe the assailant was seeking revenge for being bullied when he attended the school.
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