Knife-Wielding Attacker Injures 7 Children In China
BEIJING (AP) - A knife-wielding assailant injured seven students outside a primary school in northern China on Friday, the latest in a series of knife attacks on schoolchildren.
Two adults were also injured in the attack in the city of Hanzhong. State broadcaster CCTV said the suspect was a 58-year-old man who apparently wanted to take "revenge against society" after being prosecuted for theft.
It wasn't clear how badly the children were injured, although photos posted on the social media accounts of state news outlets showed a child being carried off on a stretcher.
Calls to the local public security bureau and propaganda department rang unanswered.
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Mass attackers in China often use knives or homemade explosives because Chinese law tightly restricts the sale and possession of firearms. Many of those incidents have occurred at schools, dating back to a series of attacks in 2010 in which nearly 20 children were killed that prompted a response from top government officials and led some schools to beef up security.
In December 2012, a man used a knife to injure more than 20 children outside a primary school in China's Henan province. The attack occurred on the same day as the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, in which a gunman shot dead 26 people at an elementary school.
Earlier this year, an assailant injured 10 children outside a school in the island province of Hainan before using his knife to kill himself.
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