Six people were killed in a knife attack at a pre-school in China’s southern Guangdong province on Monday.

The attack occurred around 7:40am (local time), according to a statement from the local police in Lianjiang, a city of less than 2 million about 483km west of Shenzhen. A 25-year-old local man surnamed Wu was arrested. No potential motive was given.

A statement from the police did not give information about the victims, but state media reports said that residents had seen one child and two adults lying on the ground near the pre-school’s entrance. In addition to the six dead, one person was injured.

Knife attacks are not uncommon in China, where guns are tightly controlled and shootings exceedingly rare. And many stabbing rampages have targeted schools. Last August, an assailant killed three people and wounded six others at a kindergarten in Jiangxi Province in China’s southeast. In 2021, two people died and 16 were injured in an attack at a kindergarten in the southwestern region of Guangxi.

The government has called on schools to boost security, especially after a string of school attacks in 2010 that left more than two dozen people dead, including 19 children. The attackers in such cases have usually been sentenced severely, sometimes to death.

The authorities have often attributed the attacks to people with “grudges” or those seeking “revenge on society”. Experts and some officials have suggested that the attackers are acting out of frustration with China’s rapidly changing society and social stressors such as unemployment.

New York Times News Service