Attacker kills seven school kids in China

Beijing : A knife-wielding man killed seven children and injured 12 others as they returned home from school in northwestern China yesterday, authorities said, in one of the deadliest such rampages in the country in recent years.

A suspect was detained and the injured children were receiving treatment, the propaganda department of Mizhi county in Shaanxi province said on its official social media account.

The incident took place at around 6.10pm local time, the department added.

County police said initial investigations suggested that the 28-year-old male suspect was a former pupil at the middle school, where he had been bullied.

They believe he may have turned his hatred onto the current pupils and had bought a dagger to carry out the attack.

Police said that five girls and two boys had been killed in the attack, and another nine girls and three boys were injured. The ages of the children were not given.

Knife attacks are not uncommon in the country, but this is one of the most serious incidents in recent times.

In February, a knife-wielding man with a personal grudge killed a woman and injured 12 others in a busy Beijing shopping centre – a rare act of violence in the heavily policed capital.

Last year, a man armed with a kitchen knife killed two people and wounded nine others in a supermarket in the southern city of Shenzhen.

And in January 2017, a man armed with a kitchen knife stabbed and wounded 11 children at a kindergarten in China’s southern Guangxi autonomous region.

Schoolchildren are also soft targets for disgruntled individuals who want to air their social grievances.