- The attack took place at Wufang Mingde Primary School in Guixi City
- Whether there are children among the victims has yet to be confirmed
Two people have been killed and ten others injured after a woman armed with a fruit knife carried out a brutal knife attack at a Chinese primary school.
The deadly attack took place around noon at Wufang Mingde Primary School in Guixi city, southern China’s Jiangxi province.
Police have said it was carried out by a 45-year-old woman surnamed Pan, who used a fruit knife during her brutal stabbing. Whether there are children among the victims has yet to be confirmed.
The female perpetrator has now been arrested, the police said in a statement on social media.
Two people died after rescue attempts failed. Four others suffered non-life-threatening injuries, and another six received “minor scratches”, state broadcaster CCTV said.
A violent stabbing attack took place at Wufang Mingde Primary School in Guixi City, China
Two people were reportedly killed while ten others were injured after the knife attack
It is currently unclear why the primary school, which serves children aged six to 12 in China, was targeted.
Pan is currently in police custody and the case is under investigation, the broadcaster added.
Parents at the school expressed their shock and fear after hearing the news that the school had been attacked.
Speaking to the BBC, one father said, “Of course we’re scared. It’s not just the kids; even we adults are very scared’.
He also added that the teachers handled the tragic incident well. They immediately posted photos of the children in the parent group, declaring that they were safe and assuring them that the doors were locked.
Another parent, who chose to remain anonymous, said: ‘I received the news around noon and I was very shocked.
‘My child is in fifth grade and came home very young and safe, but the school did not inform us of anything and kept everything hidden.
“I’m going back to comfort my child and find out exactly what happened.”
The incident fits a disturbing pattern seen in China in recent months, with a wave of knife attacks that have killed and injured several civilians, including one attack on a hospital.
Last May, a man stabbed two people to death and injured another 21 people in hospital in the southern province of Yunnan.
In August last year, a man with a history of mental illness killed two people and injured seven others after unleashing a knife attack in a residential area, also in Yunnan.
In July of the same year, six people, including three children, were killed in a sickening stabbing attack at a kindergarten in the southeastern province of Guangdong.
In the massacre, a 25-year-old man surnamed Wu was arrested by police in Lianjiang.
Firearms are banned in China, but the country has seen at least seventeen knife attacks on schools, colleges and universities since 2010, ten of which occurred in more recent years, between 2018 and 2023.
The majority of these cases have shown that the perpetrators are men who have expressed resentment against society, although experts have said there may be other factors behind what appears to be an increase in mass stabbings in China.
This is a breaking news story. More to follow.