A 39-year-old woman has been detained by police for injuring at least 14 children with a knife at a kindergarten in Chongqing on Friday morning, reported Chongqing Broadcasting Group.

The stabbing occurred at Yudong New Century Kindergarten in Chongqing’s Banan District.

Police arrested the suspect at the scene, while the child victims were sent to hospital for emergency treatment. The case is currently under investigation. The motive of the attacker is unclear at this point.

Mobile video footage shared by the broadcaster showed the alleged female suspect being dragged away by police, as well as an injured child lying on a hospital stretcher. A crowd of police officers, parents and young children can also be seen standing outside the kindergarten in the videos.

Videos taken by bystanders were widely circulated on the social media. One Twitter user posted a screenshot of a WeChat group in which one member claims that the incident happened in their mother-in-law’s neighbourhood.

“A woman and her husband were arguing, and to take revenge against society she stabbed the children at the kindergarten with a knife,” read the comment. “The children were outside doing morning exercises.”

There has been a noticeable spike in school stabbings in China, where attackers have previously used them to air their personal grievances. 

In June, a 29-year-old man fatally stabbed two children outside a primary school in Shanghai, while nine schoolchildren were stabbed to death in a county in Shaanxi province in April. The Shaanxi attacker, Zhao Zewei, was executed by Chinese authorities in September.

South China Morning Post

BDST: 1146 HRS, OCT 26, 2018
SI