Seven die in China kindergarten attack

BEIJING - At least six children and a teacher were hacked to death and 20 injured Wednesday morning at a kindergarten in northwest China’s Shaanxi province, authorities said.

The incident happened at about 8 a.m. at a kindergarten in Nanzheng county of Hanzhong city, said Liu Xiaoming, a publicity official in Hanzhong.

Liu had earlier said seven children were killed, but later told Xinhua that a teacher was among the dead.

“The murderer has killed himself,” said Wu Xiaoyan, a publicity official in Nanzheng.

The attacker was a man who lived close to the kindergarten in Nanzheng county near Shaanxi’s Hanzhong city, a spokesperson for the county government told DPA.

There has been a string of attacks against kindergarten and primary schoolchildren in China since March.

Mentally-unstable 41-year-old doctor, Zheng Minsheng, who stabbed eight schoolchildren to death in Fujian province’s Nanping Experimental Elementary School March 23, admitted in court that he “intentionally” killed them. Zheng earlier said he wanted to stab more than 30 children.

Twenty-eight children were stabbed April 29 by a 47-year-old unemployed man at Zhongxin Kindergarten in Taixing city in Jiangsu province. A day before that, 16 primary school students were stabbed by a mentally-unstable 33-year-old man at the Leicheng First Primary School in Guangdong province’s Leizhou city.

A farmer from Shangzhuang village in Shandong province, immolated himself April 30 after viciously hitting five kindergarten children and a teacher with a hammer at a school.