Citizens gather outside the Zhongxin Kindergarten in Taixing City, Jiangsu Province, where a total of 32 people, including 29 children, were injured in a knife attack Thursday. Photo: CFPTwo days of knife attacks at schools in separate provinces have left 48 people injured, including 3- and 4-year-olds, and resulted in renewed calls by citizens over what they consider lax security at schools across the country.
A total of 29 young children, along with two teachers and a security guard, were stabbed or cut Thursday morning at the Zhongxin Kindergarten in Taixing City, east Jiangsu Province, according to local police. Two of the children were later listed in critical condition, according to Zhu Guiming, an official with the local publicity department.
An initial police investigation indicated that Xu Yuyuan, a 47-year-old local jobless man, broke into a classroom at the kindergarten with a 20-centimeter blade and began attacking indiscriminately.
Before police apprehended Xu, he was knocked down by an unidentified man with a fire extinguisher, the China NewsAgency reported.
The attack came a day after another man cut and stabbed 15 students and a teacher at a primary school in Leizhou, Guangdong Province, nearly 1,500 kilometers away. The suspect in that stabbing was identified as Chen Kangbing, reported by the Xinhua News Agency to be mentally ill and on sick leave since February 2006.
The two rampages are the latest in a string of similar violent attacks on schoolchildren in the country, some of which have been deadly.
Media outlets reported Thursday that Xu has been jobless since 2001, when he was sacked from his position as a salesman at a local insurance company. He was subsequently charged with participating in illegal pyramid schemes of an unspecified nature.
"We are doing our utmost to save the kids. A medical team from our hospital has teamed up with medical experts sent by the provincial government to cope with the emergency," a staff member at the local People's Hospital in Taixing city told the Global Times Thursday by phone, confirming that no children had yet died from their wounds.
Chen Xuefang, whose 3-year-old son, Zhou Rong, was injured in the attack, told the Global Times that she was denied entry by hospital staff to the ward where her son had been admitted for treatment.
"I am dying to see my child, but the doctor won't let us see him," she said. "I am scared. I saw blood on the floor of the kindergarten."
The mother blamed the kindergarten's lax security for the attack. "The kindergarten has no security guard, just an old man as the gatekeeper; though the social security conditions in the kindergarten's neighborhood are generally good," she said.
A teacher at the kindergarten, who refused to be named, quickly told the Global Times by phone that "Parents were called to pick up their children immediately after the attack." He declined to answer any further questions and hung up.
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