BEIJING: Six people were killed and one wounded in a kindergarten stabbing in southern China’s Guangdong province on Monday, local officials said.

“The victims include one teacher, two parents and three students,” said a spokeswoman for the city government in Lianjiang, where the incident took place.

She did not offer details about the identities or ages of the victims, nor about the weapon used in the attack.

“One suspect has been arrested,” she said.

The suspect was a 25-year-old male surnamed Wu, local police said in a statement, adding that it was an “intentional assault.”

“The incident was a stabbing,” a Lianjiang police spokesman said.

Police said they are now trying to verify the identities of the victims.

The attack took place around 7.40 am, the state-backed China News Network reported.

A tall, thin man with his hands pinned to his back is seen being shoved into a police car in a video published by Sanxiang Metropolis Daily, run by the government in neighboring Hunan province.

Other videos shot by passersby claiming to show the crime scene were swiftly removed from video-sharing platform Douyin and Twitter-like Weibo.

While guns are strictly controlled, China has seen a spate of mass stabbings in recent years.

Violent crime has been on the rise as the economy has grown in recent decades and the gap between rich and poor has widened rapidly.

Spate of attacks

Fatal attacks targeting students and schools have occurred nationwide.

The attacks have forced authorities to step up security and prompted calls for more research into the root causes of such violent acts.

Last August, three people were killed and six others wounded in a knife attack at a kindergarten in southeast China’s Jiangxi province.

In April 2021, two children were killed and 16 others wounded when a knife-wielding man entered a kindergarten in southern China.

In June of the previous year, 37 students and two adults were wounded by a knife-wielding attacker at a primary school in southern China.

And in November 2019, a man climbed a kindergarten wall in southwest Yunnan province and sprayed people with a corrosive liquid, wounding 51 of them, mostly students.

The same year, eight schoolchildren died and two others were wounded in a “school-related criminal case” in the central Hubei province, with a 40-year-old man arrested.

In April 2018, a 28-year-old man killed nine college students and injured 12 others outside their school in the northern province of Shaanxi.

The attacker later said he acted out of revenge after being harassed by a student at the same school.