BEIJING - A man stabbed four primary school children to death on Friday in the southern Chinese region of Guangxi, state media said, the latest in a series of knife attacks that have unnerved the country. In a separate incident, six people were killed in a stampede in a primary school in Kunming, the capital of the southwestern province of Yunnan, state news agency Xinhua said. It did not give details.
Police were hunting a middle-aged man after the knife attack, Xinhua said, citing the public security bureau in Lingshan county in Guangxi. Xinhua did not suggest a motive. The man attacked the children as they were on their way to school, Xinhua said. Three of them died at the scene and one died later at a nearby hospital. The attack comes less than a month after a man killed three children and injured several at a primary school in Hubei province. Violent crime is rare in China compared with many other countries but there has been a series of attacks on schools and children in recent years.
The attacks have led to much soul-searching and calls for measures to improve security at schools in a country were many couples only have one child.
In May, a knife-wielding man stabbed and injured eight students in a primary school in another city in Hubei. In December 2012, a man barged into a village primary school in the central province of Henan and stabbed and injured 23 children.
School guards in China are often not equipped or trained to stop such attacks.