BEIJING – A knife-wielding man wounded 28 children — most just 4
years old — and three adults Thursday at a kindergarten in eastern
China, the second such violent assault at a Chinese school in as many days.
Five of the students were in critical condition in the
hospital in Jiangsu province, said Zhu Guiming, an official with the
propaganda department in Taixing city. Zhu said two teachers and a
security guard also were hurt in the attack that happened early in the
school day.
The attacker was a 47-year-old local man, the
official Xinhua News
Agency reported. It said many of the victims were 4 years old and
in the same class at the Zhongxin Kindergarten.
The violence was the latest in a string of attacks on
young children at Chinese
schools. On Wednesday, a man broke into a primary school in Guangdong province in
southern China and wounded 15 students and a teacher in a knife attack.
The rampage Wednesday in Leizhou city came on the
same day as another assailant was executed for killing eight children
last month in stabbings that shocked China.
Xinhua said no other details were known in the latest
case in Jiangsu.
A staffer at the No.1 Taixing People's Hospital said
by telephone that the hospital had received some of the wounded. "The
injured have been sent here one after another. The doctors are now
trying their best to save them," said the worker, who like many Chinese
officials refused to give his name.
In Wednesday's attack in which a teacher stabbed
fourth and fifth graders in their heads, backs and arms, Xinhua said the
suspect suffered from mental
illness and had been on sick leave since February 2006. He was now
in police custody.
None of the victims in that case had life-threatening
wounds, said the director of the command center at the Leizhou Public Security Bureau,
who gave his name as Qin.
Wednesday was also the day that Zheng Minsheng, 42,
was executed in neighboring Fujian province for the March 23 murders of
eight children outside their elementary school as they waited with their
parents for classes to start.
During his trial earlier this month, Zheng admitted
to killing the children because he had been upset after being jilted by a
woman and treated badly by her wealthy family.
Two weeks ago, a mentally ill man hacked to death a
second grader and an elderly woman with a meat cleaver in southern Guangxi, and
wounded five other people.