A knife-wielding man went on a slashing rampage in a kindergarten in eastern China, leaving three children and one teacher dead in the country’s latest school attack, area residents said yesterday.
Officials refused to release details of the attack, saying they feared reports could inspire copycat killers. The assault was the latest in a spate of gory rampages this year in schools and in public spaces that have left dozens of people dead and scores wounded.
The unidentified assailant entered the school in a suburb of Zibo, Shandong Province, at about 4pm on Tuesday as parents were picking up their children, said people living nearby contacted by telephone.
About 20 children and staff members were injured, two of the children seriously, they said.
Authorities have responded with increased security at schools and orders to limit media coverage of the attacks to discourage more violence and calm public fears.
Official news media were silent on the attack yesterday — a sign editors had been told to steer clear of the topic. Online postings about it were deleted by mid-afternoon by government censors who police the Internet for material considered politically sensitive.
The head of the Zibo government propaganda department’s news office, who gave just his surname, Bi, would say only that there had been “very few deaths and injuries.”
“The country has a regulation about reporting on these sorts of reports. There’s a worry that they might inspire copycat crimes creating a negative impact, so therefore, we are not issuing a report,” Bi told reporters by phone.
A woman who works in a restaurant opposite the Boshan District Experimental Kindergarten’s Jinfengyuan branch said the attacker was a man aged 27 or 28 who gained entry to the school by posing as a parent.
Police rushed to the kindergarten soon after the attack and officers transported some wounded children to a hospital before ambulances had time to arrive, said the woman, who would give only her surname, Zhang.
“The kindergarten has been sealed off,” Zhang said. “There are still police officers there.”
Zhang and other area residents said the teacher died of her injuries yesterday morning.
The Zibo killings came just two days after a man driving an earth mover in Hebei Province to the west went on a rampage, smashing vehicles and buildings and leaving 17 dead.
The seemingly unrelated attacks have prompted calls for more attention to diagnosing serious mental illnesses and ignited fears over the toll stress is taking on the nation’s emotional health.
Turning heads as they cruise past office buildings and malls, driverless taxis are slowly spreading through Chinese cities, prompting both wariness and wonder. China’s tech companies and vehicle manufacturers have poured billions of dollars into self-driving technology over the past few years in an effort to catch industry leaders in the US. Now the central city of Wuhan boasts one of the world’s largest networks of self-driving cars, home to a fleet of more than 500 taxis that can be hailed on an app just like regular rides. At one intersection in an industrial area of Wuhan, AFP reporters saw at least five
China and Vietnam yesterday inked 14 documents spanning cross-border railways to crocodile exports after Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) met with new Vietnamese leader To Lam in Beijing. The Vietnamese president’s visit to Beijing, his first overseas trip since becoming the general secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam earlier this month, signals a desire between the two communist neighbors to strengthen ties, amid growing trade and investment, despite occasional clashes over boundaries in the South China Sea. “China has always regarded Vietnam as a priority in its neighborhood diplomacy, and supports Vietnam in adhering to the party leadership, taking the socialist
A former Saudi Arabian official alleged in a report that the kingdom’s Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman forged the signature of his father on the royal decree that launched the kingdom’s years-long, stalemated war against Yemen’s Houthi rebels. Saudi Arabia did not immediately respond to a request for comment over the allegations made without supporting evidence by Saad al-Jabri in an interview published yesterday by the BBC, but the kingdom has described him as “a discredited former government official.” Al-Jabri, a former Saudi Arabian intelligence official who lives in exile in Canada, has been a years-long dispute with the kingdom as
‘ENOUGH IS ENOUGH’: Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges were assisting with emergency cases as more than 1 million doctors were expected to strike Hospitals and clinics across India yesterday turned away patients except for emergency cases as medical professionals began a 24-hour shutdown in protest against the brutal rape and murder of a doctor in the eastern city of Kolkata. More than 1 million doctors were expected to join the strike, paralyzing medical services across the world’s most populous nation. Hospitals said faculty staff from medical colleges had been pressed into service for emergency cases. The strike, which began at 6am, cut off access to elective medical procedures and out-patient consultations, the Indian Medical Association said in a statement. The discovery of the 31-year-old doctor’s bloodied