Security guard stabs 39 including children inside primary school in south China

At least 39 people, including dozens of children, were injured after a security guard went on a stabbing spree inside a primary school in a southern Chinese city on Thursday morning.

The attack occurred at the Wangfu country centre primary school in the town of Wangfu in south China’s Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region at about 8:30 am soon after students had gathered for a day in school.

Soon after, the alleged attacker, identified as 50-year-old security guard Li Xiaomin, rushed in with a sharp weapon and went on the stabbing and slashing spree.

The school principal is said to be injured, state media reports said. The reason for the crime wasn’t immediately known. The suspect Li was arrested.

Local authorities told state media that at least eight ambulances were dispatched to the school to rush the victims to the nearest hospitals. At least two of the victims were seriously injured in the knife attack. Their identities were not immediately revealed.

No one had sustained a life-threatening injury, local authorities told state media. China has a history of knife attacks mostly carried out by disgruntled employees or mentally disturbed persons.

A disgruntled school worker had gone a similar rampage at a primary school in Beijing in January 2019, attacking 20 students, injuring at least three of them seriously. Many such attacks are triggered by personal grievances.

In April 2018, a 28-year-old man killed nine middle-school students as they were returning home in one of the country’s deadliest knife attacks in recent years, news agency AFP reported. The killer, who said he had been bullied when he attended the school in northern China’s Shaanxi province, was executed in September, the news agency further reported.

In 2012, a knife-wielding man in central China had attacked dozens of kindergarten children because of family problems.

Two children were stabbed to death outside a Shanghai kindergarten in June 2018, while nine children died in a similar attack at a school in Shaanxi province in April.

In October 2018, a woman stabbed at least 14 children at a kindergarten in southwest China’s Chongqing city. Reports said a woman attacked the children with a kitchen knife inside the school.