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April 29, 2010

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16 primary students, teacher knifed

A TEACHER suffering mental disorders broke into a primary school in southern China and stabbed 16 students and a teacher with a knife yesterday, the same day another school attacker was executed for killing eight children last month.

Chen Kangbing, 33, barged into Leicheng First Primary School in Guangdong Province's Leizhou City and started attacking about 3pm before police seized him.

The victims, who suffered wounds to their heads, backs and arms, were taken to Leizhou People's Hospital.

Nine of them were discharged last night.

All the injured remaining in hospital were in a stable condition, said Chen Riwen, a spokesman for the provincial education department.

The 16 students were fourth or fifth graders and the injured art teacher is male.

Initial investigations showed that the attacker was a teacher at Hongguan Primary School in the city's town of Baisha.

Suffering from mental disorders, he had been on sick leave since February 2006, the spokesman said. The attacker's mental state when committing the crime remained unclear, he said.

After the rampage, teachers of the primary school surrounded Chen to keep him from fleeing or hurting more people before police officers arrived, witnesses said.

There was no immediate word on a motive for the attack, which came the same day that Zheng Minsheng, 42, was executed in neighboring Fujian Province for the March 23 murders of eight children outside their elementary school as they waited with their parents for classes to start.

China has witnessed a series of school attacks in recent years, most blamed on people with personal grudges or suffering from mental illness, leading to calls for improved security.

Two weeks ago, a mentally ill man hacked to death a second grader and an elderly woman with a meat cleaver in southern Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and wounded five other people.

In February 2008, two students at the Leizhou No. 2 Middle School - in the same city as yesterday's attack - were stabbed to death by a former classmate who broke in, attacked a boy and a girl, then stabbed himself and jumped from the fifth floor of the building. The attacker, Chen Wenzhen, died.

He had dropped out six months earlier because he suffered from headaches and could not concentrate on his studies, media reports said at the time.



 

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