Police in Shanghai say a 29-year-old man used a kitchen knife to attack 3 boys and a woman near a school, killing 2 of the children.
A man using a kitchen knife attacked three boys and a mother near a school in Shanghai on Thursday, killing two of the children, police said.
The 29-year-old suspect carried out the attack around 11:30 a.m. and was caught by police with the help of passers-by, the Xuhui district public security office said in a notice on its official Sina Weibo microblog page. Two of the boys died at a hospital.
Another boy and the woman survived and did not have life-threatening injuries.
Shortly after, a row of uniformed police stood guard on the sidewalk where the attack took place while street cleaners used jet sprays to hose the area down.
People gathered in small huddles and some lay bouquets of flowers against a tree and on a fence. «Child,» read a hand-written note on one bouquet of white chrysanthemums. «There is no suffering in heaven. Hope that everything will be well for you in heaven.»
Police said the man, surnamed Huang, had arrived in Shanghai earlier this month and was unemployed. They said he carried out the attack «to take revenge on society.»
The suspect could not be reached for comment.
Chinese law restricts the sale and possession of firearms, and mass attacks are generally carried out with knives or homemade explosives.
Perpetrators of similar attacks in the past have been described as mentally ill or bearing grudges against society.
Many of those incidents have occurred at schools, including several in 2010 in which nearly 20 children were killed, prompting a response from top government officials and leading many schools to beef up security.
