http://www.onenewsnow.com/Headlines/Default.aspx?id=1009742BEIJING- An attacker hacked seven children and one teacher to death Wednesday and wounded up to 20 other people in a rampage at a kindergarten in northwest China, the latest in a string of savage assaults at the country's schools.
The killer, identified as 48-year-old Wu Huanmin, returned home after the attack and committed suicide, a local official and state media reported. A motive wasn't known, although reports indicated the assailant and the school's administrator may have known each other.
The slayings occurred despite a countrywide boost in security at schools, with gates and security cameras installed and additional police and guards posted at entrances.
In Hanzhong, an industrial city of nearly 4 million people in Shaanxi province where the attack occurred, about 2,000 police officers and security guards had been detailed to patrol public schools, kindergartens and surrounding areas beginning last week, according to the city government.
The attack began at 8 a.m., as children were arriving at the Shengshui Temple Kindergarten in Hanzhong's Nanzheng county, said Liu Xiaoming, deputy director of the city propaganda department. The area is on the city's rural outskirts in a relatively poor part of the country.
He said seven children and one teacher were killed and that about 20 others had been wounded.
"The murderer killed himself afterward," Liu told The Associated Press. He said he did not have any other information.
A Nanzheng county resident reached by phone said crowds had gathered outside the kindergarten, but information was spotty. The man said Wu had rented the property to the kindergarten.
"I saw him before and he looked quite normal," said the man, who would identify himself only by his surname, Li.
The ages of the victims weren't known, although the official Xinhua News Agency said they included five boys, two girls and teacher Wu Hongying, who the agency said ran the kindergarten. It also suggested she knew the assailant. Wu is a common Chinese surname and it wasn't clear if the two were related.
Xinhua put the number of wounded at 11 children and one adult and said two children were in serious condition.
The attack is the fifth major assault at a school since late March, sparking security fears among parents, officials and educators.
Sociologists say the attacks reflect a lack of support for the mentally ill and rising stress resulting from huge social inequalities in China's fast-changing society. Such issues have largely been ignored in state media's reporting on the attacks, which have focused instead on increases in security in an effort to quell public fear and potential unrest.
The assaults began with an attack on a primary school in March in the city of Nanping in Fujian province where eight children were slashed to death by a former community clinic doctor with a history of mental health problems.
The man convicted for that crime was executed on April 28, the same day a 33-year-old former teacher broke into a primary school in the southern city of Leizhou in Guangdong province and wounded 15 students and a teacher with a knife.
The following day in Taixing city in Jiangsu province, a 47-year-old unemployed man armed with an 8-inch (20-centimeter) knife wounded 29 kindergarten students _ five seriously _ plus two teachers and a security guard.
Just hours later, a farmer hit five elementary students with a hammer in the eastern city of Weifang before burning himself to death.
The government has sought to show it has the problem under control, mindful especially of worries among middle-class families who, limited in most cases to one child due to population control policies, invest huge amounts of money and effort to raise their offspring.
Topic: 7 children killed in latest attack at China school (Read 1125 times)