Man stabs 22 children in China
2012-12-14 19:16
Beijing - A man stabbed 22 primary school students in a
knife attack in China on Friday, officials said, the latest in a series of
assaults.
The attacker "has been detained", said a
spokesperson for the Guangshan county government in the central province of
Henan, where the stabbing happened.
"Twenty-two elementary school students were stabbed,
so was an adult villager" but none of the victims died, the official, who
declined to give his name, told AFP.
The state-run China News Service said a man attacked the
students with a knife outside an elementary school, resulting in injuries which
were "not life threatening". It did not give the children's exact
ages.
China has seen several violent attacks against children
over the past two years, including a spate of five incidents in 2010 which
killed 15 children and two adults and wounded more than 80.
The assaults have forced authorities to increase security
around schools and led to calls for more research into their root causes.
Violent crime has been on the rise in China in recent
decades as the nation's economy has boomed and the gap between rich and poor
has expanded rapidly.
Studies have also described a rise in the prevalence of
mental disorders, some of them linked to stress as the pace of life becomes
faster and socialist support systems wither.
But authorities say that murder, which carries the death
penalty, remains far less common than in most Western countries.
- SAPA
