6 dead in attack at kindergarten in China’s Guangdong province
- Chinese media platform reports attacker used a knife to kill victims
- Authorities say 25-year-old man has been detained in a case of ‘intentional assault’
Six people were killed and one was wounded in an attack at a kindergarten in China’s southern Guangdong province on Monday morning, according to municipal authorities.
The Lianjiang Public Security Bureau said the “intentional assault case” happened at about 7.40am in Hengshan township, Lianjiang. A male suspect, surnamed Wu, 25, was detained at about 8am by police.
A notice posted on the bureau’s WeChat account did not give a motive for the attack and did not reveal the identities of the victims.
According to several media reports, the attacker used a knife.
A report by Hubei news platform Hubei Jingshi quoted unverified “online information” as saying the dead were a teacher, two parents, and three students.
A video circulating online showed what appeared to be at least two victims lying on the ground near the gate of a kindergarten.
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Knife attack in China kills 6 at kindergarten in Guangdong province
The police notice said Wu was a resident of Lianjiang, a city of about 1.8 million in southwestern Guangdong about 500km (310 miles) west of Hong Kong.
The privately-run kindergarten has been operating since February 2021 in Hengshan, a township of 130,000 people under the administration of Lianjiang, according to Chinese media outlet Caixin.
A staff member from the municipal propaganda department told the Post that the investigation was ongoing.
The attack was one of the top trending topics on China’s social media platform Weibo, with more than 460 million views as of Monday evening.
In June 2018, a 29-year-old man used a knife to kill two primary school students in Shanghai. The killer was executed in December 2020.
One of the most horrific attacks in recent years took place in April 2018 in Shaanxi province when a man attacked students outside a secondary school at the end of a school day with a knife, killing nine.
The court said the attacker was “angry at innocent people because his work and life were not going well, and he sought revenge by stabbing students with a knife”. He was executed later that year.
Following the incident in Guangxi, the Ministry of Education advised authorities to “effectively strengthen the safety of primary and secondary school and kindergarten campuses”.
The ministry said at the time that all schools in the country should “deeply understand the extreme importance of maintaining school safety and student safety” and ensure police were stationed at school entrances during “key times”.
The ministry also launched a “safety education week” in primary and secondary schools across the country in March to “enhance students’ ability to protect themselves” and to “prevent and reduce the occurrence of various types of safety incidents”.
