A 42-year-old former surgeon wielding a 25cm fruit knife stabbed eight primary schoolchildren to death outside their school in Nanping, Fujian, yesterday morning and severely wounded five others.
Local police and education officials said four boys and four girls, pupils from Primary One to Primary Four at the Nanping Experimental Primary School, were killed. Six died at the scene and two died shortly after being rushed to hospital.
Three other girls and two boys were taken to two city hospitals. A doctor at the Nanping Chinese Medicine Hospital's emergency unit said one boy, a Primary Four pupil, suffered severe injuries to his chest and stomach. After hours of surgery the boy was in intensive care but remained critical, he said.
Xinhua said the assailant, Zheng Minsheng, was arrested at about 7.20am. Zheng, from Nanping, used to work in a local community clinic but quit in June.
China National Radio quoted local police as saying Zheng suffered from mental illness and had previously threatened to commit suicide and 'kill several others'.
Huang Zhongping, a Nanping police spokesman, said that the stabbing frenzy lasted about a minute. 'It happened near the school gate, when it was crowded with children,' he said. 'Within about a minute, the killer hurt 13 schoolchildren.
'He was quickly contained by the crowd. We are extremely concerned by the incident and have deployed several dozen police officers to investigate the case'.