Another deadly knife attack on a kindergarten in China. Three people die. The People’s Republic has recently suffered from a series of such attacks. Safety precautions are being tightened, but the causes are still unclear.
With cruel regularity, schools in the United States are now becoming the scene of mass shootings. But China has also had to deal with bloody attacks on such facilities for several years – albeit much less frequently. And unlike in the USA, the possession of firearms is strictly forbidden in the People’s Republic. The perpetrators therefore resort to knives in their attacks – most recently in a kindergarten in Beijing.
Three people were killed and six others injured in another knife attack there. A “gangster with a cap and a mask” stormed into the privately run kindergarten in Anfu district in the southeastern province of Jiangxi on Wednesday morning (local time), local police said on the Chinese short message service Weibo. The police were still looking for the alleged perpetrator, a 48-year-old.
No information has yet been given on the age and identity of the victims. A video released by the state-run newspaper Beijing Daily showed a police officer carrying a small child to an ambulance. The alleged attacker was initially still on the run. The security authorities would do “everything to catch the suspect,” the police assured.
Most recently, in April 2021, a man killed 2 children with a knife and injured 16 others in a kindergarten in southern China. In 2020, an attacker with a knife injured 37 students and two adults at a primary school in the south of the country. According to local media, the attacker was a security guard. In 2018, a man was sentenced to death for stabbing 9 children and injuring 11 others in northern China.
Last month, four people were injured in a stabbing attack at a major hospital in Shanghai. The attacker was shot and arrested by the police. In June 2021, a man with a knife killed 6 people and injured 14 others on a shopping street in the east Chinese city of Anqing.
Because of such incidents, the authorities increased security measures. However, they are also confronted with demands for better research into the causes of such attacks. According to authorities, the attackers often had a mental illness or wanted revenge on their employers, officials or society in general. An increase in mental illness could also be due to the rapid social change in China, some experts believe.
