Chinese woman, 39, injures 14 kids in kindergarten stabbing spree

A 39-year-old woman was detained by police for injuring 14 children in a knife attack at a kindergarten in southwest China on Friday morning.

The stabbing occurred at Yudong New Century Kindergarten in Chongqing’s Banan district at around 9.30am while the children were doing morning exercises in the playground, according to an official police statement.

Police arrested the suspect at the scene, while the child victims were sent to hospital for emergency treatment. The case is currently under investigation. The motive of the attacker was unclear.

Mobile video footage shared by a local broadcaster showed the suspect being dragged away by police, as well as an injured child lying on a hospital stretcher. A crowd of police officers, parents and children can also be seen standing outside the kindergarten.

A 30-year-old Chongqing resident, who asked to be identified by his social media screen name Qijing, told the South China Morning Post that he saw the suspect being subdued outside the kindergarten at around 10am.

According to this witness, who was livestreaming on Twitter from the scene of the crime, the woman was shouting that “the government had treated her unfairly” before being taken away by police. He also saw several injured children carried to ambulances by teachers.

“I was shocked. It was horrific,” Qijing said, adding he was worried about the safety of his own three-year-old daughter who attends another local kindergarten.

While violent crime is rare in urban cities in China because of strict government control of firearms and weapons, the number of random stabbing incidents in schools have been on the rise in recent years.

In June, a 29-year-old man fatally stabbed two children outside a primary school in Shanghai, while nine schoolchildren were stabbed to death in Shaanxi province in April.

The Shaanxi attacker, Zhao Zewei, was executed by Chinese authorities last month. He told police that he committed the crime because he wanted to seek revenge against society since he had been bullied in school as a child.