BEIJING, April 29 (UPI) -- For the second straight day in China, a knife-wielding man attacked schoolchildren Thursday, injuring 28 kindergarteners, five of them critically.
Authorities said a 47-year-old man holding a knife allegedly broke into a kindergarten schoolroom in the morning and began attacking the children in Taixing city in eastern Jiangsu Province, Xinhua news agency reported.
Two teachers and a security guard who tried to stop the suspect were also injured, authorities said.
Most of the injured children are about 4 years old. Police said five of the children were injured critically.
Police held a suspect, identifying him as an insurance salesman unemployed since 2001.
A day earlier another man injured 16 children and a teacher with a knife at a primary school in south China's Guangdong Province. Some of those victims were in critical condition, Xinhua reported. The suspect, in his 30s, was identified as a teacher in a nearby village.
There have been a number of stabbings of students in China recently despite efforts to step up security and deal firmly with attackers, raising public concerns about school safety, Chinese media reports said. The motives of the attackers largely remained unclear.
The Guangdong province attacks occurred on the same day Zheng Minsheng, 41, a former community doctor, was executed for fatally stabbing eight elementary school children and injuring five others March 23 in eastern Fujian province. The accused, in his appeal of the sentence, said his behavior was the result of his ex-girlfriend defaming him.
In other recent attack cases, China Daily reported a 40-year-old man stabbed and killed an 8-year-old boy and a 70-year-old woman and injured two boys, a girl and a man and woman April 12 near a primary school in Xichang town in the southern Guangxi Zhuang autonomous region.
A canteen staffer at a vocational school in Qingdao in eastern Shandong province was accused of stabbing four students April 21 after a quarrel over a drink.
A young woman was stabbed and killed last month by a man who also injured two other people on a university campus in Chengdu in southwest Sichuan province, police said. The accused was identified as a sophomore at the university.
