(Beijing) A knife attack in a school in eastern China, perpetrated by a former student, left eight people dead and 17 injured on Saturday, authorities announced, adding that the perpetrator had been arrested.
Posted at 2:02 p.m.
Ludovic EHRET
Agence France-Presse
Such deadly attacks are rare in this country. But this is the second killing in China this week after a car ramming attack which left 35 dead on Monday.
Saturday’s drama unfolded around 6:30 p.m. (5:30 a.m. Eastern Time) in Yixing City, Wuxi Vocational Institute of Arts and Technology, Jiangsu Province, said in a press release from the local police.
“It left eight people dead and 17 injured. The suspect was arrested on the spot,” she stressed.
The establishment, which has around 12,000 students according to its official website, is located around 150 km as the crow flies west of Shanghai.
According to the first elements of the investigation, cited in the press release, the suspect is a 21-year-old man, a student from the class of 2024.
“Because he did not graduate after failing the exams and because he was unhappy with his remuneration during his internship, he returned to school to express his anger and commit these murders,” said Yixing police.
“Mental health”
The suspect “confessed everything,” she said.
The relevant services “are fully mobilized to provide care to the injured, manage the aftermath of the tragedy and carry out the investigation into this matter”, concluded the police.
The establishment welcomes students from all over China and offers numerous training courses, particularly in art, design, ceramics and fashion.
No video of the drama was at first glance visible on social networks, a sign of a possible withdrawal of content by the platforms.
But many Internet users said they were stunned by this series of two killings in the same week.
“What state of desperation must these people be in to reach these extremes? », Commented a user of the social network Weibo.
“Security on campuses must be strengthened, as must psychology courses for students, so that other tragedies of this kind do not happen again,” reacted another.
“This is the how manyth case of this type this year? […] The wealth gap is getting bigger and bigger, everyone really has to work today to live,” lamented a user of the platform, who was trying to begin an analysis.
Invisible comments
Censorship of comments seemed to be at work on Weibo, particularly under messages from official media which mentioned the tragedy. That of state television CCTV thus declares having generated 6,357 comments, but only twenty, very agreed, remained visible.
China remains a very safe country, but it has experienced several deadly attacks in recent months.
A 62-year-old man drove an SUV into people exercising outside at a sports complex in Zhuhai, Guangdong province, on Monday evening, killing 35 people and around 40 people. injured.
In Shanghai, a man killed three people and injured 15 others in a knife attack at a supermarket at the end of September.
A few days earlier, a Japanese schoolboy was stabbed to death in Shenzhen (south).
On another note, in March 2014, a stabbing attack against travelers at Kunming station left around thirty dead and more than 140 injured.
The authorities had designated separatist militants from the Xinjiang region (northwest) as having been responsible for this “terrorist” attack.
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