China kindergarten stabbing: Everything we know about knife attack that left six dead

Six people, including three children, were killed and one suffered injuries in a stabbing attack at a kindergarten in China's south-eastern province of Guangdong on Monday.

A 25-year-old man surnamed Wu has been arrested from Lianjiang, the local police said, adding they were investigating the incident.

A teacher, two parents and three students were identified as the victims of the attack that took place at 7.40am local time as parents were dropping their children off for summer classes in the downtown area of Hengshan township.

The suspect was reportedly arrested by 8.00am local time. Local police called the incident a case of "intentional assault" without providing further details on the attacker’s motive.

An unconfirmed video being widely shared on social media purports to show at least two of the victims lying on the street outside the school in a pool of blood.

Dafeng News cited an unidentified witness as saying that the suspect's child had been struck by the car of one of the people who was killed at the school in an earlier incident, the Associated Press reported.

Authorities have not released the identities of the victims.

The attack comes just a week after the Chinese education ministry released a notice to local authorities urging them to ensure student safety during the summer holiday.

The attack sparked an emotive debate on Chinese social media platform Weibo, where the incident was one of the top trending discussions on Monday afternoon.

“It’s outrageous to do this to children who have no power at all. How many families will be destroyed by this ... I support the death penalty,” one Weibo user said.

Another user questioned security at schools, especially after similar previous attacks. “Why do such cases still continue to emerge?”

Videos shot by passersby of the alleged crime scene were promptly removed from video-sharing platform Douyin and other social media websites.

There has been a spate of knife attacks at schools in China – where access to firearms is tightly regulated by the government – in recent years.

Violent crime in China has been on the rise as the economy has grown in recent decades, widening the gap between the rich and poor. The Chinese government has largely attributed attacks to people bearing “grudges” against society with an aim to “wreak revenge”.

State officials have also suggested poor mental health of people suffering to adapt to the changing society and social stressors such as unemployment as reasons behind the targetted killings.

However, mental health resources in China remain limited, with the topic still looked down upon by society.

In 2010, two high-profile mass stabbings at schools – in which 15 children died in total – occurred in the span of three months, pushing the Chinese government to step up security at schools.

At least eight elementary school students in Fujian province were killed in a knife attack in March that year, sparking fears at the time of “copycat crimes”. Later in May, a 48-year-old man killed seven children and injured 11 others with a cleaver at a kindergarten in Shaanxi province.

However, despite the government upgrading school security after these two incidents, such attacks have continued.

In August last year, a 48-year-old man barged into a kindergarten in southeastern Jianxi province, killing three people and injuring another six.

Two children were killed and 16 others wounded in a similar knife attack at a kindergarten in southern China in 2021.