Children hacked to death in new China school horror
Seven children and a teacher were hacked to death and at least 20 others injured today at a kindergarten in China’s north-west Shaanxi province.
The shocking attack in the Nanzheng county of Hanzhong city was the latest in a string of attacks on schools.
The killings occurred despite a countrywide increase in security at schools, with additional police and guards posted at school gates.
The official Xinhua News Agency said the attack happened at 8am (1am Irish time).
Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the propaganda department of Hanzhong city, said: “The murderer killed himself afterwards.”
Today’s rampage comes after three attacks at schools and kindergartens late last month left dozens of children injured and raised questions on security and issues of massive social inequalities believed to cause the violence.
A Nanzheng county resident reached by phone said crowds had gathered outside the kindergarten.
He said the attacker was believed to have been a villager surnamed Wu, in his late 40s, who owned the house in which the kindergarten was located.
“I saw him before and he looked quite normal,” said the man, who would identify himself only by his surname, Li.
The attack is the fifth major incident at schools and kindergartens since late March, sparking security fears among parents, officials and education chiefs.
In Hanzhong, an industrial city of 3.72 million people, nearly 2,000 police officers and security guards had been ordered to patrol public schools, kindergartens and surrounding areas beginning last week.
Sociologists say the attacks reflect a lack of support for the mentally ill and rising stress resulting from huge social inequalities in China’s fast-changing society.
Such issues have largely been ignored in the state media’s reporting on the attacks, which have focused instead on increases in security in an effort to quell public fear and potential unrest.
The assaults began with an attack on a primary school in March in the city of Nanping in Fujian province where eight children were stabbed and slashed to death by a former community clinic doctor with a history of mental health problems.
The man convicted for that crime was executed on April 28, the same day a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the southern city of Leizhou in Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife.
The following day in Taixing city in Jiangsu province, a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an 8in knife wounded 29 kindergarten pupils – five seriously - plus two teachers and a security guard.
Just hours later, a farmer attacked five primary school children with a hammer in the eastern city of Weifang before burning himself to death.
The government has sought to show it has the problem under control, mindful especially of worries among middle-class families who, limited in most cases to one child due to population control policies, invest huge amounts of money and effort to raise their offspring.
